The Trunk

I have spent the last seven weeks since my mom passed away wondering if I would ever be able to write about the jumble of feelings I've been experiencing.  Of course there is the profound sadness that comes with the grief of losing a parent, but I've discovered there are many more layers to the emotions I've felt.  

The first week or so I had overwhelming feelings of guilt.  If only I had gotten to her earlier, administered CPR sooner, maybe she would still be here.  I felt as if I'd let her down in the worst possible way and the tormenting twins of guilt and grief kept me awake nights and dominated my waking thoughts.  Eventually those emotions gave way to more acceptance and less self recrimination, helped immensely by the reassurance I received from her attending physicians and nurses. There is still a bit of residual guilt, but I am coming to terms with that and letting it be gradually washed away and replaced with the certainty that it was her time and not about me or what I did fast enough or efficiently enough.

 

 

As I began sorting through her belongings, I was a wreck.  Seeing her purse, still sitting where she left it on the dining room table, her reading glasses folded on top of her bedside devotional and her mail piled neatly on the kitchen counter nearly broke my heart.  Little by little I was able to sift through things and begin dividing everything into categories:  keep; donate, throw away.  I felt a twinge of disloyalty throwing things out that had meaning to her but held no value to anyone else, but eventually I was able to do this in a more dispassionate way.  And then, as I began tackling her bedroom, I found the steamer trunk in the corner of her closet.  I knew she had it, I saw it come off of the moving van when she came down from Chicago, but I'd always assumed it was filled with quilts and afghan throws.  Wrong.  It was filled with her life.

I found pages from her baby book in my grandmother's handwriting telling the story of her birth that I never knew.  She'd had internal hemorrhaging when she was born and the doctor told my grandmother there was only a 1 in 100 chance my mom would survive.  She had two blood transfusions, from my grandfather and the doctor himself and after four days her prognosis changed for the better.  My grandmother died when my mom was only fourteen years old and I'd never even seen her handwriting before.  Reading on, I saw when Mom took her first step, said her first word and received for her first Christmas and birthday.  It was as if I was reading an intimate letter from my grandmother to my infant mother as she faced the fear and uncertainty of a sick newborn and the joy she felt knowing her child would live. 

I now have two impossibly tiny white cotton dresses that she wore as a little baby back in 1928.  I lovingly hand washed and put them away so that if I'm blessed with another granddaughter at some point in the future, she can wear the dress and I can hold history in my arms. 

I found a postcard that my grandfather (an incorrigible bounder who I never met, but apparently evolved into a pretty awful person) had sent my mom when he was away on a business trip - back when he was still part of their little intact family.  I had never seen his handwriting before either, and though the stories I'd heard about him were generally all bad, seeing the postcard that he wrote to his young daughter signed  "Daddy" humanized him a bit and made me wish he'd stayed that person so I might have been able to know him.

There were handwritten recipes written informally in a notebook by my grandmother when "recipes" were called "receipts."  Although anyone who knows me is aware that cooking is not my strong suit, I may try a few out. 

I found letters of commendation she'd received as a young, single woman working as a medical secretary.  It touched me that she'd kept those letters all these years, but made me realize that she, like me, needed validation from time to time and the letters were tangible proof of her professional worth.

And then she was married to my dad.  The wedding album was there, filled with pictures of them, and hope for their life together.  Her veil had caught on fire from a candle near the wedding cake as they had leaned over to cut the first piece and my dad had heroically torn the veil from her head and put out the fire, so some of the photos showed her bare headed, smiling sheepishly into the camera.

I was what was referred to as a "honeymoon baby" so there, amongst the pictures, letters and memorabilia was the miniature ankle bracelet that I wore as a newborn at Woodlawn Hospital in Chicago.  My mom was 86 years old when she died, and knowing that she kept this talisman of my birth for nearly 62 years touched me beyond words.

Taped carefully onto a scrapbook page was a birthday card I'd given her, probably shortly after I'd learned to print my name.  There was a letter I'd written both of my parents while I was still in high school, thanking them for being so good to me.  I didn't even remember writing that, because honestly, my memories of those years were less focused on gratefulness and more on pushing for independence and straining under the yoke of their unreasonable (I thought) strictness.  In spite of the grief I must have caused them from time to time, she'd held on to this letter, choosing to think me as a loving daughter rather than a spoiled and ungrateful one.

These things - pieces of paper, faded photographs, letters and keepsakes were able to provide comfort and allowed me to feel her love surround me.  And for the same reason she kept them, to comfort and connect her to her own parents, I am able to touch them, read them and hold them as a dear connection between us.  I am still navigating my way and missing her every day, but I am so thankful that I have these simple things to draw on to help me through.  What a blessing these random memories in an old trunk have been to me.
I miss you, Mommy.