For anyone who could not make it to the show or just wants to hear it again, below is the piece I read for Listen To Your Mother Boston. It is a longer and edited version of a post I had previously written.
My
mother passed away five years ago. She had a rare muscle
disorder that slowly but surely affected every muscle in her body.
Although she had a lifetime of declining health, the end came faster
than any of us had anticipated. I remember I visited her one day and she
was her usual self. She was in her bed arguing with me about wanting to
get up. I was annoyed that we were having the same conversation again
since I knew she couldn't get out of bed with just my help anymore. Her body had
trapped her in that bed even though her mind wanted her to be up and
about. I'm sure I wasn't as patient with her as I could have been. Our
roles had long reversed and it was honestly pretty exhausting for me at
times. I then received a call the next day that she was unresponsive.
Just like that her body was shutting down. I got to her house in time to
hear her last words – my brother's name. I know that she didn't say my
name because she knew I was there. I was always there. The next four
days involved painstakingly watching her die in front of us with nothing
we could do. She held on longer than the hospice staff said she would. I
began that week never wanting to let her go and finished it by begging
God to take her. I'm sure that she wasn't ready to go but her body had
failed her. I remember the exact moment that I heard her breathing stop
and I knew she was gone. At that moment I felt relief – relief that the
horrible vigil we were keeping could come to an end and relief that she
would no longer be in pain.
After
she died, we had a pretty quick turn around on her house with moving
her stuff out and other people moving in. My brother and I went through
the house like a whirlwind and honestly tossed most of the stuff. In
hindsight, would I have liked to have taken more time to go through the
house and hang on to more things? Maybe. Although, I’m not really a
sentimental person. I’m not a keeper, I’m a thrower. I'm too practical
to hang on to things. And in the past few years there hasn’t really been
anything that I have thought of that I wish I had kept so I think it
all really worked out. Plus, when you are living in the moment of grief
and loss, who has the time and energy to really know if you are doing
the right thing? You just try to make it through the day one task at a
time.
So
when all was said and done, I walked away from my mom’s house, the
house I had spent my entire childhood in, with her photo albums and only
one other small box. That box was filled with a few childhood keepsakes
and a couple of things that I had to have. One of the items was a
large spool of string. The string lived in the cabinet above our stove
with other random artifacts that were used infrequently. My mother had
told us that my father, who passed away when I was a baby, brought the
string home from work one day in the 1970s. The string is old and a bit
dirty but it is our string. It is the string that I remember my
mother going to get out for any project we were doing, for hanging
decorations around the house, and for any other thing that you could
possibly use string for. I vividly remember standing on a chair and
tossing everything from that cabinet when cleaning out the house and not
being able to throw the string away. To anyone else it is a spool of
discolored thread. For me, it is a symbol of so many memories. I now use
the string at my house with my family. I think of my mother every
single time we use it. I can only hope that someday when I’m dead and
gone my daughter, Isabelle, will hang on to the string for the same
reasons that I did. Oh, and yes I have no doubt that the string will be
around long after I am. I mean how often do you even use string? And
this spool appears to be never ending.
The
other item that I had to keep when cleaning out the house? A Ziploc bag
full of toothpicks. It would have been so easy to toss the toothpicks
during the big clean out but I just couldn’t. The bag doesn't zip
anymore and it's decorated with snowmen that are vanishing. The snowman
bag lived in my mother’s hutch. Anytime we were baking she would send me
or my brother in to get out a toothpick to test to see if what we were
baking was done. Like the string, these toothpicks seem to last forever.
They are a reminder of days when my mother was in better health, days
where we cooked together, and days where we laughed together. They
remind me of holidays and of happy times. Now when we are baking I send
my children to our hutch to get out the toothpicks. We talk about how
the toothpicks belonged to my mom and how extra special they are. In
those moments, I'm so very glad that I didn't throw them away.
If
you had ever asked me what would be my most treasured items to keep
after my mother died, I never in a million years would have guessed old
string and a broken plastic bag full of old toothpicks. I mean they're
basically junk. But they are our junk. They are junk that helped
shape my childhood. Junk that is now shaping my children's childhood. I
think it goes to show that you just never know what is going to tug on
your heartstrings the most. Sometimes it's truly the unexpected items
that are the most priceless.