My mother gave up her fight for life on Oct. 22, 2011, after a long and grueling and somewhat baffling journey that left us all a bit off balance. Family members descended and a lovely funeral was held to honor her life and legacy.
And then we began the arduous task of dismantling everything she had built up for herself these last several years in Nashville.
It’s staggeringly difficult. While not a hoarder in the reality TV, “I need psychiatric help” kind of way, Mom did manage to squirrel away a lot of stuff, and not all of it was just from the past decade. She’d carted a lot of memorabilia, antiques, old linens — see-through towels we’d used back when my sister and I were children, blankets, old pillows embroidered blockily with our names — from California to Tennessee, and she somehow found space for them in her brand-new and beautiful condo.
Furnishing this beautiful new condo is an assortment of beautiful new furniture: leather couches and recliners, flat-screen TVs, glass-topped tables, wrought-iron lamps and ornate furnishings that make me feel like I’ve stumbled into someone else’s reality. How can these lovely, elegant things belong to the same scrappy, frugal woman I grew up with, who washed and reused plastic sandwich bags to save money and never bought new clothes for herself unless something wore out completely?
But now as I’m sorting through all of this bounty, I feel like a vulture, circling, looking for the right moment to lunge and tear. It’s wrong to sift through someone else’s things and evaluate each item as to its potential value or lack thereof to me. I feel like I’m trying to capitalize on this moment of loss and mourning, even as I consider and appraise the surprising treasures I find among my mother’s possessions.
Being in her place, where she was when the last stroke hit her and she collapsed in her bathroom, feels like walking across thin splintering ice. It feels like I’m ransacking a temple where something sacred and terrible has happened. I look at all the photos on her walls — there are so many of my children that I can feel her love for them like her own arms around me. Among all the pieces of opened mail we found on her kitchen table was a card from my son, with his sixth-grade picture inside and a sweet note that reduced me to tears.
There is so much to do, so much to process, so many feelings to feel and memories to forge that we’re all exhausted after only a few hours of work. Each piece I handle brings its own weight of memory with it, from the 10 unopened boxes of Ziploc freezer bags to the keychain she saved from my senior prom in 1989. It’s astonishingly painful, staggeringly intimate and incredibly difficult to catalog, quantify and codify her life, and then to negotiate with my sister over which things I will take and which she will claim.
We travel around Nashville to lawyers and banks and county clerks to transfer titles and bank balances. We carry with us multiple copies of her death certificate as a macabre calling card that gives us the power to take charge of this life. There are so many details my heart almost stops with anxiety.
So much stuff. Is it what defines who my mother was? There’s a lot of it, more than we knew, but I also know she was so much more than the things she owned, and it feels wrong — dirty, almost — to be viewing her belongings with such an opportunistic eye.
I don’t want her things, I want her. I want her alive beside me to enjoy with me all these things she worked so hard to gather around her. I would trade them all just for one more chance to have her smile at me and tell me everything is going to be okay.
You know that I’ve been doing the exact same thing for a month now, and that’s the feeling I get every time I walk in to the apartment. But after a month, I’ve just made the conscious decision (and it really did take a conscious decision) to take the nice stuff gratefully and not to give in to feeling like a vulture. You’ll see your Mom again, and in the meantime, she’d want you guys to have her best things — things that always will trigger a memory of her (AND she’s probably thrilled to finally have an excuse to get rid of those threadbare towels). One example: My brother and I, while we have not worn even close to the same size clothes for more than two decades, always had the same size feet. I’m wearing his shoes right now — I think about him every time I put them on, and I kind of like that.
I will look forward to seeing you in your brother’s shoes. Does that mean you’re following in his footsteps or walking a mile in his shoes… Sorry. I know you’ve been through it. I’m glad you’re finally coming to some measure of peace about it and are choosing not to punish yourself for taking some of the things I’m sure he would want for you to have. But it does feel like a back-alley garage sale, doesn’t it? Thanks for commenting — I know it has been hard…
I am so sorry to hear about your mother’s passing. I was looking through photo albums the other day, and came across a picture of you from vacation bible school in Lakeside, Oregon from years ago. So, I was searching the internet and here you are. In fact, I still have some of our pen pal letters, even the Anne of Green Gables book you sent me for a birthday! I have such good memories of that summer
You may not remember me, I know, but you were so sweet and good with the kids. My husband and I travel through the Bay area once a year, and every time we pass San Mateo I smile. Hope you are well and I am thinking of you.
Carrie! I do remember you. What a great summer that was. So glad you looked me up, just wish it were under happier circumstances. Would love to hear about your life now, your husband etc. Fun to hear from you.
I’m sorry you’re going through this. I feel like I’m with you as I’m reading your blog and it’s bringing back memories about my Dad. You’re in our prayers. Becky
You’ve expressed thoughts and feelings that millions have experienced before you, but have been unable to articulate themselves. This is an incredible collection of posts you’ve written, Julia. I hope that somewhere, mingled with the sadness, is a sense of pride that you were able to chronicle this most difficult journey. Your words, even those that describe the lowest points, are comforting.