This is all fiction.
Let me know if you liked it.
=====Part I =======
My mom was getting older. She lived alone and had fallen twice in the past year. It was time to move her to a nursing home where someone could look in on her and make sure she was eating and taking care of herself.
Mom had always been a hippie. Her parents lived for a time on a commune in Minnesota, and mom and her three siblings were raised in that lifestyle. I had always known this, but it was just an interesting factoid.
My wife Samantha and I, and our boys Tristan (8) and Devon (14) had been spending our weekends for the past month at my mom’s house cleaning it out, identifying what she would take with her to the home, what should be sold, trashed, given away, etc.
There was a large box in the cramped attic that my son and I struggled to get down through the narrow stairway. The cardboard was pretty flimsy, and we unceremonsoly dropped the box on the ground as we got to the bottom step.