(This is part one of a three part column. )

My mother died in June of 2008. My father passed away four years earlier so, with the death of my mother and all of the accompanying emotion, also came the inevitable job of cleaning out their house.

This four-story, six-bedroom, 90 year-old, center-hall colonial was my home from the time I was 5 until I moved out just before entering graduate school. It was the first home I knew and, in some respects, the only one that mattered at the time.

It was a very sad task to dismantle the living room that had been the backdrop of so many wonderful Christmas mornings, to close the bedroom window where I had been serenaded by my first boyfriend, and to turn my back on the front porch from which my dad escorted me on the afternoon of my wedding. It was nearly intolerable at moments to witness my home becoming just a house.

In the chaos of the final days there, I found a tattered piece of blue mimeographed paper. "A Christmas Medley" was sketched across the folded page.

Its contents revealed the program for the 1977 Christmas Pageant from Sacred Heart Grade School. Ours was the kind of Catholic school where attendance by the neighborhood kids was assumed upon birth and never ever questioned. It was located, of course, just around the corner, next to the church and as a child I was reminded of the presence of God three times a day by the bells that rang from the steeple.

As is the response sometimes when surprised by unexpected memories, after finding the program I spent the next few minutes laughing aloud and sobbing silently, for reasons that remain too complicated to discern, even now.

My reaction made it clear to me the importance of this piece of blue paper. I remember distinctly, on the advice of a friend placing it within the pages of a hardcover book, hoping that this would preserve it further and protect it for the years to come.

Eventually, I did leave the living room, shut that window, lock the door and turn my back on that porch, each for the last time.

Distance and the passage of time graciously aided me, and in the weeks following, I became fairly convinced that my home was packed in boxes and shipped to either my brothers or me, and that what was left standing in my hometown in New York, just outside the city, was merely a house.

As the months passed I did nothing to recall that place or that time. I wallowed in the emotional letdown of my final departure and prayed that my heart and soul would begin to mend just a bit. I very gladly became absorbed in the events of my life here in Mount Pleasant.

Much to my pleasure, in late autumn a friend and I began exchanging an excellent series of e-mails. He is a friend from those days past, the kind of old friend whom I have no need to impress, because, even if I tried, he would call me out on the obvious facade. In initial messages, I shared with him the happenings of life and the things of apparent importance. In response, he often spoke of his daughter. He did so with admiration, and I remember thinking that it was really wonderful of him to do so. We had both, long ago, moved away from our hometown, but recalling it together, as we would over the next several weeks, brought us both an odd bit of satisfaction, and then some.

(Colette Post was raised in New York and moved to the Lowcountry seven years ago. She lives in Mount Pleasant with her husband, Neal, and their three children. Contrary to her mother's advice, she has taken on too much responsibility and accepted too many titles. Nevertheless, there is one title of which she is most proud: friend. Since the mid seventies, she has rarely been seen, in either public or private, without a Tab in her hand.)