Tattered Legacy

I was sitting here trying to wrap my brain around my Uncle Joe passing away in the other room, here on the farm. Having a cup of coffee, calming down, while hospice finishes taking care of everything. In the last moments of his life, he handed me his tattered black book, that he carried on him everyday of his life since he was 16. This book went to Vietnam, and hundreds of other places in the world with him. He wrote thoughts, prayers, people and things he collected over his travels. As I sit and reflect on his last words to me, "This is your legacy, its torn and tattered, but is everything to me, now it's all yours".

As I page through the book reading his ideas, his thoughts and collection of items, something catches my eye. In the middle of a page, in a different color pen, are, for lack of better words, directions. There is something in or under the barn. Now I have lived here most of my life, I've been in the barn thousands of times, but I never noticed anything, out of the ordinary. Nothing.

After hospice finishes and I am finally by myself, I decide to follow the book to see what seems to be hidden, in the barn. It could be anything, Uncle Joe, was a little eccentric and he loved to create mystery around items he collected. The barn dates back to before the revolutionary war and was tediously taken care of, theres a large loft which he converted into a studio. A workshop in the old horse stalls, where he did woodworking but nothing like he described in his book. I searched and found nothing until I tripped over a rather large iron ring on the hay covered floor. Well thats odd, so I grabbed a broom and started cleaning the area and found a door, in the floor. The ring on the door latched on a large hook on the post.

On the stairs going down under the barn, was a light switch. The basement under the barn was as big as the barn. There were shelves with statues, relics, vietnam trinkets, war memorabilia and chests from all over the world....What in the......Some of the chests actually looked like pirate chests, some were a little more modern but each one had a different type of collection. There were also little black books with each chest or shelf, itemizing the entire collection, and their value. My uncle must have spent his life, cataloguing and organizing his collection. That crazy man was sitting on millions of dollars in treasures....and he gave it all to me.

His tattered legacy was now mine.