Discovered for whom?

When my brother Vance passed away in April, me and my two other brothers went over to his house to gather his personal items that were still remaining. Picture albums, newspaper articles, trophies, high school letterman's jacket...all items I remembered him having that would be lasting tokens of his time here. One item I didn't think much about when I picked it up was his home stereo. It was one of those small, compact ones that holds 5 CD's. I think they call them bookshelf stereos. For the past five months it had been sitting on a shelf in my garage.


Until last night.


As I cleaned it off, I happen to hit the button to eject all the CD's still in the stereo.

Out came three from the Beatles:

1. Magical Mystery Tour

2. Abbey Road

3. 1

And The Best of Three Dog Night.

Why am I writing about this?
Let me back up one small step to explain. When my dad passed away in 2003, he'd been suffering for several years from Alzheimer's and lived 1,100 miles away in MA. I know that in his condition, he basically sat mindlessly in front of the TV all day when he wasn't with his wife Annie. So when he passed away there were no points of nostalgia like a novel he was reading or a vegetable he was growing in a garden. Just TV, his cigarettes and his dog Duke.

So last night, I was saddened to think that Vance had no wife or kids who would take this "discovery" and have it stick as a memory of what their loved one liked to listened to at the end of his life.

It seemed like if I took those CD's and just put them with the others, I would be erasing a piece of his story that no one other than me would ever be able to tell or reminisce about.

In retrospect, I guess that Eric, Mark, my still grieving mom and I are the ones this slice of memory will be for.

A part of me just wishes there was a wife or children in which I could share my find. Why do you suppose that is?