In November it was time to turn John’s room into a guest room.  The sky blue paint he had picked in second grade was chipped and faded.  The duvet cover was torn, re-stitched and torn again.  Posters were falling off the wall.  His bulletin board, with childish clowns spelling “JOHN” across the top, was an indication an update was long overdue. It should have been done years before his room turned into a shrine.

His great grandfather’s desk dominated the room and it had to go.  A huge old roll-top, it had always been too big for the room, but he loved it and wanted it because it belonged to the other John Coupins before him.  He loved all the little drawers and shelves and compartments.  Perfect to store lots of stuff in, eliminating much need for other furniture.  Preparing to move it to storage, I spent a few hours sorting through everything in it.  John was a disorganized mess, and the desk was evidence of it. Only three of the many drawers had a dedicated purpose.  I knew about these three because occasionally when I was tidying up, I would place items in the appropriate drawer. One was for loose change.  One filled with random treasures and trinkets found throughout childhood.  And one for tickets.

I turned over the ticket drawer onto the desk and out spilled memories.  Hundreds of memories.  Disneyland tickets. Tony Blair at the Oakland Speaker Series. Stacks of Oakland A’s baseball games.  CAL football games, Sharks, Warriors, Raiders. SO MANY movie tickets. A baseball game at Arizona State.  A football game at the University of Oregon. A CAL bowl game in Las Vegas. There were airplane tickets and electronic hotel keys, a Paris metro ticket and a museum ticket from the Pre-Columbian Gold Museum in Costa Rica, all brought home over many miles in a jacket pocket and placed in the ticket drawer.

There were concert tickets; Merle Haggard in 2002, Depeche Mode in 2005. Snowglobe 2012.  A show at the Independent with Shelby and Paul and I eight months before he died. We had gone to dinner at Mua in Oakland then to live music in the city.  A double date. I thought we would have so many more nights like that, but it was the only one.

He saved tickets from classical performances that he grudgingly attended.  The annual tradition at Grace Cathedral’s Christmas concert.  He complained the whole way there, but still saved the tickets.

He had mindfully set all the tickets aside in an uncharacteristically organized manner.  And with that, he can say to me, from wherever he is, “See Mom?  We had a really great time here together, and it meant a lot to me, so much that I took care to save these. Thank you. I got a whole lot of living in while I was here. Here is the proof. I want you to know that it was enough for me.”

It was amazing.