How Will I Get Ready??

How can a person whose dining room table looks like this, covered since the first week in April with every document our Uncle Ed ever saved....

.....ever possibly come to look like this in 48 short hours?

From here I just don't know.I wrote about Uncle Ed here just a day or two ago. Now it is time to do the hard work of putting these things aside - and the harder work of having our first holiday without him.It reminds me of that wonderful Emily Dickinson poem , written as I always have supposed, the morning after her mother's death:

The bustle in a houseThe morning after deathIs solemnest of industriesEnacted upon earth, -

The sweeping up the heart,And putting love awayWe shall not want to use againUntil eternity.

It is time though. Time to get out the good plates and press forward... Now where did I put my grandmother's good tablecloth again?