Recently I was home in Maine for my parents' burial. On my last afternoon there, I visited the older of my two little brothers and his partner and their dog, who was my father's dog. There were four boxes of Mom's stuff for me to go through. I had requested, if there were any Christmas decorations left- because I had been too wrapped up in tying up my mother's business after she died to go through the myriad boxes she had kindly labeled with "Santas," "Snowmen," and so on to actually look through them all, and I am not a "collector" and there were so many boxes and I was flying... Anyway, I requested her Christmas village. I was handed a bag of tiny evergreens with spray snow on them and little people, including the angel I later placed on my parents' grave, and then a ceramic church.
This was not the village I had requested, much as in the late spring when I searched my mother's apartment for the cribbage board that lived on her table and on which she and I played in the evening when I was visiting, I was offered two other cribbage boards by my little sister, and I finally left town with the two decks of Civil War soldier cards that were my favorites for playing cribbage with my mom, who was an amateur Civil War historian.
We all grieve differently. And family is family. I love my siblings, and we are all four quite different. (Ask my mom's best friend, who marvels that she has never met four blood children who were so different.) We all have handled the quite sudden deaths of both our parents within just over three weeks of each other differently.
So, I opened the first of the boxes. In it were old letters and cards, among other items. I had not seen these items in the process of going through my mother's stuff while at her apartment. It was all that was left. I recalled one Rubbermaid box of papers sitting on a shelf in the hall closet, and thinking at the time, that is all. I was wrong.
And though I did not get the cribbage board, the only thing of hers I thought I wanted, or the Christmas village, the only Christmas decoration of hers I had wanted, though she had insisted that all us kids go through those decorations and pick and choose, I got Mothers Notes. There is nothing more precious that I could have received, particularly as my mother and I had a contentious relationship from the time I was... I don't know... young.
Two sheets of paper from an old tablet would have been gone forever, with my eyes never seeing them, never reading those precious words from those precious moments of my early life, and the love and pride expressed by my mother and about me.
Once a long time ago, I think when I was in college, but maybe in my early adult life (college was not adult life), my mother and I got in an argument on the phone, and I vaguely recall telling her I knew she loved other siblings more. Soon after, I received a letter from my mom telling me how important I was as her first born, and how much she loved me. I am sure I have that letter still somewhere, though I've moved so many times, I can't say where.
Or do I? Did I think I got the gist and eventually let the letter go like I let so many physical things go, secure that the meaning, the understanding, is still there?
My mom's Mothers Notes were still with her. She had stored them carefully with just a few other small items, cards from the baby showers for me and for the brother who came next, cards from my little sister, a card and letter from her good friend Barbara.
I don't think there were Mothers Notes for the other three of us kids. I think as those for me ended when I was 3 years old, no more came. Life went on, things were ordinary and never particularly easy on many levels. But for 3 years my mother had something in her life that was new, important, and worthy of writing about- and hanging onto.
Those moments were mortal. They passed on, just like everything and everyone does. All that is left now that she is gone with her memories, are those notes- which would have been gone too, if I had not at least opened that box instead of saying, "I don't collect things. I have all that I need." I do have fond memories of that time in my life, but those memories are not hers.
How long will Mothers Notes persist in this world? When do moments become mortal and disappear forever?
Is that what we fear?
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