A tale of tiny trowels and big erasers.

My mom has been cleaning out my dad's desk, and in the process discovering many random treasures. My favourites include: 

• A Kodak film container that's so old it's made of metal not plastic. And it still has a roll of film inside.
  
• A tiny sterling silver trowel that my dad traced to Birmingham in 1911-12 based on the hallmarks. My mom thinks it's supposed to be a bookmark, which reminds of the scene in Breakfast at Tiffany's where George Peppard and Audrey Hepburn go to Tiffany's and make fun of a sterling silver phone dialer.
  
• The slide rules my mom and dad each got when they started university. My mom's is monogrammed; my dad's is not.
  
• The instruction manual from a Digi-matic SR-8 calculator (calculator itself nowhere to be found). "You'll find many uses for your electronic calculator" it says. "Budgets...Stock and Bond Investing...Slide Rule Calculations." I guess that was why slide rules got shoved to the back of the drawer.
  
• The giant eraser and accompanying note I gave my dad for Christmas as a joke when I was twelve, because he was always asking to borrow mine. "Dear Dad," I wrote.  "I know you are perfect and never make mistakes, but just in case..."

They are all useless objects (even the eraser, which is hard and dried out). And yet somehow each involves a heart-rending decision - keep or throw out?

I miss him so much right now.