My grandmother was dying when I penned this post.

There is a lot of what my mother bitterly calls it, drama, concerning the surrounding circumstances. But most of it is not important; what matters at this moment is how she does not want any of this drama when the time comes for her to require elderly care, and when she passes away.

"Please, put me in a home." I know. Unlike her sister, I will do the responsible thing and recognize that I can be no caregiver. "And I do not want a viewing." Give me flowers while I am living. We agree on that. She does not want the "song and dance" of the whole funeral thing and knowing her family, "song and dance" would be the understatement of the decade. She doesn’t even want a gravestone. "Cremate me. Or donate my body to science. I’m already an organ donor." She even suggests, if she ever succumbed to dementia like her mother, to pump her full of LSD and, hm, let her go. "If I’m going out, I want to have a good time."

Jokes aside, no one likes to think about their mother dying.

So the topic turned to other things– in hindsight– a segue. Mom had recently visited the attic to retrieve the vinyl collection. As an avid user of Spotify and iTunes, she no longer felt the need to keep them around and was going to donate them. And the packrat that I am (my VHS collection can attest to this), I snatched them up.

We went through the entire stack. Some I’ve never seen before (growing up, I was more interested in the growing technology that was the Compact Disc; the vinyls were safe from my pillaging), but some I recognized as the art the covered the living room wall. From Talking Heads to Prince, Michael Jackson and ZZ Top and AC/DC and… albums about… drag racing? That one took me by surprise.

Some are certainly damaged. Others scratched. Others still, missing covers in the dusty stack. Covers missing records.

While I did joke about selling The Beatles’ White Album, I knew they weren’t going anywhere. Especially with mom’s words in my ears, about leaving nostalgic tokens of love behind.

There was a story for most of them: going to the record store after watching The Wall, her singing a few bars of Lovin’ You, some albums she had while growing up, and some I remember fondly as cool stuff on the walls.

These stacks of albums tell a story of what my parents experienced and loved. It is another thing I can hold, memories of weight I can feel and thumb through.

When the time comes I will let her go, but I’ll hang onto Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk album for a while longer.