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Looking Ahead

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Autumn 2017

A friend’s elderly mother unexpectedly died. My friend is the only other person I know who lived in her mother’s house. It was a bond, a commonality, that is broken now, and I feel the loss. Her mother died well, two days after making marmalade, with time to say goodbye. I want that for my mother, but it’s already too late: she is no longer able to make marmalade, or live her best life.

I woke to that news one morning last week, then fell apart in the shower. The water rained over me, mingling with my tears. I can’t imagine this house without my mother in it. I don’t know if it will be an exaltation of space or a vault of emptiness. I can’t imagine that it will ever come to pass. She will always and forever be here. And that may be true even after she’s physically gone. Sometimes my body remembers having my own home—being a grown-up—and it feels so different here in my mother’s house. When she’s gone, I won’t have that jubilant feeling of “this is mine, I made this happen,” as I did in my own new home. It will always be my parents’ house, and I will be a squatter as long as I stay here.

This week, under the Seattle sun, baby Adrian and I walk the 15 blocks to pick up three-year-old Elliot from day care. Elliot sticks close to me on the walk home, holding my hand while I push the stroller one-handed, until we cross the last street and he is on his home block. He trots ahead of me then, arms swinging, head swiveling left and right as he takes in his surroundings. If he could, I think he would whistle. He turns into his driveway, well ahead of his brother and me, yelling, “Mommy! Mama!” hoping they are home from work. He knows his familiar. He knows where he is safe.

The day after I return from Seattle, Mt. St. Helens at the edge of the huge blue sky is visible from the windows across the front of the house—all the windows since I had the branches of Mama Fir trimmed up [after Mama moved to assisted living], a sixty-fifth birthday gift to myself. I track an eagle floating on the breeze from one end of the valley to the other. This spot on the earth is my familiar now. Maybe it has become home, my safe place like Elliot’s.

I don’t know how long I will stay here when my mother is gone—and it isn’t entirely up to me since I’ll share ownership of the house with my sisters—but I want to stay long enough for the next generation to remember it, to consider it their ancestral home as I do my father’s childhood home in Michigan. That familiar place, with my uncle’s recent death, no longer belongs to the family after more than 100 years. That my four grandchildren be able to tell the story of those who lived here to their children when I’m gone is suddenly of utmost importance to me. If that means living for a few more years in a place that will never be my own, and spending more time and energy than I would like to maintain it, so be it.

What We Leave Behind

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What do we do with the stuff our parents left behind? And what about our own stuff? A year ago I wrote a post on this website about cleaning out my parents’ house of more than fifty years (a condensed digest of an ongoing series on my other blog). I’m still at it. Because I’m living in the house, there’s no sense of urgency. And yet, as I consider options for what’s next for me, I’m held back by all the minutia that isn’t mine, from an overstock of paper clips to an antique organ, from nuts and nails to my father’s enormous desk.

A friend wrote about cleaning out her mother’s house after she died—that generation of savers, oh my—and of the saved bits and pieces of her own life.I often write the word “excavations” on my “things to do” list, or a I use this phrase “I am a miner” to inspire my efforts. I couldn’t help be fascinated (and somewhat repelled) by all the little boxes, jars and containers full of doodads, screws, & miscellaneous parts that your family saved. I went through the same thing too at my mom’s. She had saved dozens of snus (snuff) cans from her father, filled with every screw, nail, bolt, curtain hanger, drape hook, and carpet tack of his, as well as my dad’s stuff in baby food jars, cat food cans (the last cat died in 1966) and cigar boxes (his father smoked cigars, and he always brought home empty ones from “The Club”). But, I think maybe I had it somewhat easier going through some of those things compared to what you are faced with now, because my mom moved to a different house twenty years ago, and she was an obsessive organizer and labeler (probably the librarian thing).

Now I’m making myself face the harder stuff, things with family memories. I whittled four boxes of antique piano music from my grandmother down to one. Some of it was so old and shabby, I had to throw it out, but I took two boxes of it to local antique/collectible shops. But I can’t keep it all and I tell myself “four minus three equals one—at least I’m trying.” [Then I set to working] on a list of books (about theater and the New York stage) to offer my local theater company. I have saved six books for myself and I hope that they will accept about sixteen. My mom loved the theater.

On the horizon, waiting for me, are boxes and boxes of 78 rpm records. That may be a challenge. The thrift stores won’t take those. I might put them off for later. I actually remember some of those old records from when I was really little.

One of the hardest things about all of this is that I am recognizing my own hoarding instinct. I’ve saved many of the same things. It scares me to think that I might pass all of this stuff (or my own treasures) on to my daughter. But I know to a certain extent that I will. She tells me not to worry about it.

LV