Mama is still living but I feel like she has died. My sisters and I were at her house today (without her) sorting through closets and shelves and boxes deciding what to keep and what to let go in the upcoming estate sale.
About six weeks ago we moved Mama (kicking and screaming) to a lovely independent living apartment. She still has the same care as always; one of her children with her every evening and overnight and her wonderful weekday caregiver and dear alternating weekend caregiver.
The house had become too much for her; too much room, large full basement, yard that needs continual upkeep, A/C problems, plumbing issues, property taxes, on and on.
Added to that, she had become afraid, though she was never alone. She would stare into the dark woods behind her house every evening. By bedtime she was stacking up chairs and pots and planters against the back sliding doors, though it was double-locked. She tried to eliminate every sliver of light that may escape through the plantation blinds on the front windows. “People can see right in” she would say. I tried to convince her that no one was out there peeking in the windows but she fiercely disagreed. There were times I nearly believed her.
However, Mama is not an apartment person. She is accustomed to front door access to a porch and a front yard with a tree, complete with magenta impatiens circled perfectly around. She watches the birds and talks to neighbors who stroll down the sidewalk.
She has struggled to adjust. Understandable. Though I am not sure the struggle to adjust is as much about the apartment as it is about adjusting to this new life, this new life that is actually a death.
I pulled out small drawers in an antique dresser. In the drawers were pieces of a necklace, a tiny locket, bobby pins, safety pins, two pretty marbles and a pearl tie tack. In another drawer I found four $2 bills, a few small pine cones and a little leather pouch with her initials burned into the side.
These intimate things that have meant something to her. It feels like such an intrusion, such an uncovering of her interior life, laid bare for us to see, laid bare for strangers.
I ran across a beautiful cameo with a gray/blue background, hanging from a dainty silver chain. I do not remember seeing Mama wear it. I will ask my sisters if they mind if I take it. This journey is about seeing an item here and there that we feel a sentiment about or just something we love.
It has caused me great reflection, not so much about Mama, as myself. What will my children find? Scraps of notes and saved birthday cards. An earring who lost its mate. A drawer full of ribbons and shoelaces. Receipts and Chapsticks and headbands. Postcards and subway cards and ticket stubs.
The day caused me to want to go home and look through my own things and discard. However, I realized that there is healing in the purging. I’m glad to have found things that Mama thought were important. Every item has a story and most of those stories I will never know.
It is enough to know that they mattered to her.