The Tangibility of Presence.

 

Another four boxes arrived at my house today. Poorly packed. A haphazard conglomeration of sections of her home. Today’s batch were the contents of her art studio. The smallest room in her house. It was one of three upstairs in the old section of my parents late 1700’s log cabin. In today’s homes it would have been converted to a closet for brooms, swiffers, and the lot of disposable home keeping items that rest for a few days and find their way into landfills at the end of their short lifecycle. For my mom it was the place to display as much as contain the supplies her mind could spin into works of art. She needed rooms to herself, and, interior expressions of herself. Places to imagine as much as to invent. This was a space to conjure as much as it was to collect. We are alike in this. My house also has its own art studio… it is the size of a modern roomy bedroom. It wasn’t an after thought it was a necessity. She fit herself into places, I bust through little spaces in an attempt to living larger than I need to. Where she is demure and polite about her spaces, I am loud, outstretched and unapologetic. Between us there is a need for color, pattern, creativity and owning the whole of it.

The boxes burn me. They are carelessly complied. Dumped more than given. It is a scab I feel opened too many times over the last year. We are less than a week away from her one-year anniversary and still her belongings find me. I am supposed to be grateful to be given the first right of refusal. There have been giveaways of her things that ended up in the Amish’s hands. Not to be entitled, but, the Amish don’t care about things. Its sort of their thing to not want things. And yet they end up there. I think because my dad believes they are grateful for them. I suspect they just think he’s a little off. Who gives things to a religion built around anti-things? A few months ago he told me that he was so delighted to see the Amish kids get all excited about the pile of sunglasses he found.

“What? You gave them sunglasses?”

“Yes. They were moms.”

“No, they were mine. They were ones she borrowed. They were Prada, Maui Jim, and Gucci.”

He had no idea what I was talking about. “Huh, it didn’t even occur to me to ask you.”

“So, there are Amish kids walking around with $600 sunglasses on?” I wasn’t amused.. he has since been bringing me the boxes to inspect before dropping off at the clothesline yards around his house.

The Mothers Day gift from me to my mom, circa 2008 (maybe?)

The betrayal of getting rid of her things. Erasing all traces. The boxes hurt me as much as anything else does. Maybe more. I just cannot understand how he can get rid of her? He was clearing the house of her, “her clutter” as he would call it, before she died. That infuriated me. The boxes pick that scab.

The not understanding that she, just like me, and Diedra, needed these things. They are the tangible reminders of the life we lived. The times we want to resurrect in our minds when the days seem alone, bleak, quiet and mute. Why did he never know her? Why can’t he want to keep her around as his own tangible reminders of the life she once had?

I bet you can't guess what these are?
Painted wooden candle holders for a birthday cake.
For the girl that loves Alice in Wonderland they are perfect!

And yet with each box I feel a piece of her is still here. I sit peacefully and talk to her. Remind her where these things came from. How much we enjoyed being around them as they were around us. They are the last tangible reminders of her and for that I am grateful. 

 There are pieces of her in these boxes that she spent months on. The two quilted vests. Don’t get me wrong they were awful when they were in the works. A middle class version of a coat of many colors,,, handmade, with abundant love, but hideously gaudy. No kid who ever wanted to retain their own milk money would be caught dead in a quilted vest. It didn’t matter what year they were made, or what kind of atrocious fashion sense we didn’t have in the early 80’s, these vests were bad. Not to mention the number of hours she put into them. She was so proud of herself when she completed them. And I was so humiliated to wear them. I wore mine once to a girl scout dinner. I was 8. There is no pride in anything at 8. I knew it.

Even Storm is horrified at the sight of my vest.

Her life is like these boxes. Amassed, unfinished, and uncategorized. Just a pile. A pile packed up and left. She was more than this collection of things. The bag of calling cards. Businesses, places, and people she met along the way. The pile that was 4 inches high, weighing a half a pound in a severely overstuffed purse. She would pick them up at any place we went that she wanted to remember. Little notes written on them to remind her why she kept them. “our cherry kitchen table.” “brown sweater.” And dates to coincide with their finding her.

Two children's toys. A pull toy boat hand painted with a shaking hand. A black train with yellow racing stripes. We bought them about 5 years ago at Olde Thyme Days in Fawn Grove. The display they came from was packed with hand carved wooden toys of every imaginable type; animals, cars, boats, doll house furniture. I know she bought them because she wanted to support the elderly artist who made them. She identified with the struggling artists. She was a patron of folk art and folks who made it look native. She never found a child for them. She needed them to remind her of that day. She said she was buying them to have a present at the ready for an impromptu visit to any family who had little kids.. I know her better than that. I’m sure the conversation would have been centered around the intention still being legitimate, but the reality is visual reminders keep memories alive. We had two pieces of pie that day. It was too hard to narrow the list of homemade pies from 20 to one, so we would always buy as many as we wanted to try.. and then rummaged through the vintage and antique vendors. She loved that day in our little community fair. We ate pie, shopped local and felt at home.

She would be angry still. She got cheated, she knows it, I know it, everyone who knew her knew it.

She bet on more. There would always be more before her. More time. That’s the most bitter pill for her to accept.. she would have never swallowed willingly. You couldn’t force her to do anything. And yet maybe that’s what she needed? Forceful intentions? Reality premonitions. Promises put off to tomorrow and the calendar that would never come. She saved all of the scraps of our lives. She held onto them knowing (earnestly believing) that there would be so much more still ahead. 

We both agreed upon the necessity that even storage should be classy.

It has taught me, painfully reminds me everyday, that today is all. It might be all there ever it. I hold her little left over scraps. I fondly remember when they came into our story and I treasure them as the tactile emotionally laden tokens of a life I still share with her

The pieces;

The blue sock donkey. That pathetic sock lasted 40 plus years. Small and light has advantages over multiple moves.

The overstretched baseball glove sized terry cloth towel elephant. 

The J Crew tags/receipts and descriptive associated with each purchase. She loved that store. It was her go to present request place. She loved it so much she kept the price tags and receipts. That's devoted tangibility right there!

Her saved artwork from her previous students, with whom she never kept in touch. She would relive moments from her past to keep them alive but she wouldn’t remake them with present day re-acquaintances. She kept them in the past. Preserved. Protected and shielded from the rot of vulnerability.

There is a delicate balance to life. I think my mom lived hers living too close to the side that left her afraid so much of the time that she didn’t have any tools in her box to address dying. For all of the tangible things she had that had once brought her joy she had too few intangible tools to navigate her own mortality. She was not brave. There was no peace in her acceptance of her fate. She walked the earth avoiding confrontation, seething when it found her, and hiding in bitterness that she was unable to confront it. It transcended all aspects of her life. Even the time with me. The more she retreated the harder I pushed her to put up her dukes and stand her ground. It would never happen for her. I learned from this. I grew up wanting to be independent and self reliant. I wanted for myself what she couldn't attain. That her biggest fears were my greatest challenges to face before they found me. To her last breath she handed over the reins of her life to anyone willing to take her for a ride. While she was dying of breast cancer she let my dad search out “cures” from the people he met in the grocery store aisle, or, the internet with his one fat finger queries. He ended up at the number one search engine ips address of “Cancer Centers of America.” The place that offers Oz at the end of each patients bloodied yellow brick road. Salvation lay here. And, for the real bait kicker, they offered FREE treatments ("if you qualified"). Or so he told her. He aborted her oncologists plans. Had the ignorant audacity to say to us that “he believed the best chance at her cure was there. And that maybe her "oncologist could learn something from them." They were after all, and he quoted the advertisement here “the best you could find.” Months she didn’t have were wasted chasing options that wouldn’t put him paying $20,000 a month for the pills that were offered to her. My mom was given two free months of this new miracle drug and never swallowed one. The threat that she wasn’t going to be able to afford the pill on her 61^st day kept her from the one chance she had. When she was seen at Oz they looked her square in the face and told her it was too late for them to help her. She was too far gone for their studies and trials, and, they didn't want her dismal outcome to taint their trial results. At least they were honest with her. No one else was. She retreated to her house to hide like all of the rest of us behind CNN and the 24/7 COVID coverage.

She lived waiting to be the submissive to everyone else's choices. It was where she was comfortable. Not having to make decisions for her life left her able to complain when the consequences didn't go her way. She died waiting for affordable options. She also died in fledgling pandemic begging for company every health care worker was too afraid to provide her. She was cheated out of the only audience all of us should feel guaranteed to have; a chorus of compassion from people your life has touched. She wouldn’t use video conferences. I have found this to be true for others. The contact is what matters,, not a voice or video far away, but the person who sits beside you and peacefully holds your hand. The tactile with a pulse. There was never a tangible more for her, just lots of empty attempts, and, a house full of tangible memories. She died in her home on May 14, 2020 at 4:14 pm next to me. For her last days she hated everything. The more she never got, the stuff that couldn't fill her broken heart and the solitude that only a pandemic can bring.

The little pieces of her that still are here. Still hers. I will watch over them. They are what I am realizing I am becoming more of. I am becoming more about re-feeling than looking forward. Maybe there has been too much death around me? Maybe I feel I need to look back to remind myself that I can still feel her around me? Maybe I have this tangible need to feel and it’s holding me hostage? I don’t really know, but, I know I miss her and I know its easier to have her with me when her things are around. So I pick through them half angry they aren’t in her house, and half glad they are in mine.

This blog is the Mother's Day section of a book I am working on. It's for, and, about my mom.. it is the conversations we never had.

 

 Happy Mother's Day mom.. we miss you.