She’s Everywhere
Every time I lose something, a hilarious, dusty hunt through the boxes and tubs of the detritus of my life ensues. They are piled under my bed, the staircase, and in the closet in orderly stacks waiting for the day I live in a home that is big enough for a lifetime of accumulated nostalgia. Usually the thing I have lost is vitally important to some upcoming trip, like a passport or my birth certificate. You’d think that, at 33, I’d be capable of putting these items in a “safe place” and not forgetting where that safe place is, but I’m not.
In these fairly regular forays into my past, I find her everywhere.
An entire file box is devoted to the legal paperwork of her death. (Here’s your reminder to ask your parents to update their will if you haven’t lately. It’s morbid but necessary.)
The next file box has a folder labeled “Death Certificate,” and there, in black and white, are all the details of what may be the worst moment of my life.
In the next tub are framed photographs of weddings and graduations. For a long time, my brother and I looked at each other and asked where our matching grin had come from. The last time I found this stash of photos, it was clear. The woman who smiled with tight lips in every casual photograph couldn’t help beaming around the teeth she didn’t love when her kids were happy.
Usually by this time, no passport to be found, I’m hunting through drawers and pushing aside books on shelves. In the dusty pages of Little Women is my father’s name pricked out by the point of a pin. I fell in love with books sitting up “late” as a child and being read to every night. Her voice was warm, soothing, and everything I identified as safe as I fell asleep at her side. My passport wasn’t stuck between these books, and I did not spend the afternoon rereading passages of Little Women when I should have been cleaning. Really; I swear.
The things I lose have a tendency to turn up where I least expect them to, when they turn up at all. I found her safety deposit box key among earrings I had forgotten I saved. The enamel ladybugs and whales that scream 1985 are now in regular rotation on my lobes, and every time I poke the gold studs through, I hear her arguments against eight-year-old me, who desperately wanted her ears pierced.
I’ve spent a lot of time writing about everything I lost when my mom died, but I try, especially around Mother’s Day, to remember all the things I still have. The memory of her love and kindness imbue every friendship I have. The advice she gave that has stayed stuck in 2002 and the decades before pop up whenever I need to treat a stain, choose formal wear, or make a meal. I cook her recipes, wear her jewelry, and am occasionally knocked sideways by an unexpected, emotion-inspiring memory.
If I can’t have her around to judge my choices and champion my victories, at least I have these little pieces of her as a constant reminder of her well-lived life. And every time I lose something — a trait I totally got from her by the way — I just get another chance to wander down memory lane.
Like this story? Recommend and share it with a friend.
