Sorting through the Odds & Ends of Mom's Life

The true secret of happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life. ~William Morris

Mom's been gone for over a month now. For a while it's felt like she's still at the memory care facility and I need to go see about her. But that's not so. She doesn't need anybody to see about her now. She's in a better place. Her smile is back. She's laughing and glad to finally be "home" with her mother and dad. She would sometimes say when she had a moment of clarity before the dementia got worse that she was ready to go on except she didn't want to leave us. Then at the end she no longer remembered us so perhaps that made it easier for her to leave. 

We've begun going through her things. So far we've just scratched a little of the surface, but already we're seeing things with no real value except that they meant something to Mom. All the odds and ends of a life well lived. There's the newspaper article with my picture when one of my earlier books was published. Then we find a certificate she received for work with the Homemakers. We go through piles of bird magazines because she did love her birds. We find enough greeting cards and stationery to fill a shopping bag. I know she intended to send each and every card to her many friends. The old Scrabble game that dates back to our childhood is in a shirt box. She saved it even though someone gave her one of the deluxe game boards that swiveled and had little pockets for the tiles. We found the dictionary so well used as she worked her crossword puzzles that it was falling apart. 

Mama's memory is soaked into everything we pick up. We find Dad's jacket with his horseshoe champion patch sewn on it. And there in the back of a closet are his clay court croquet mallets. We take garbage bags full of things to Goodwill and put other garbage bags in the trash. But we also have piles we keep for ourselves. Things we can't seem to part with. I think we're all going to have to build on a storage room. And we haven't even started on the real memory drawers. 

But it has to be done and I'm fortunate to have two sisters to work through the memories with me. What can we save? What will we do with this? Do you want it? Where will we put it? How can we part with it? The questions echo between us.

Mom has keepsakes from her family and from Dad's family too. And now we are going to have keepsakes too. But the best keepsake is all the memories of times with her. We will part with what we have to with sadness, but we'll never part with the memory of her love.  

Have you had to sort through a loved one's things? What was the hardest part of that for you?

The Girl in the Picture

Some things are keepsakes that can't be gotten rid of even though they have no real value other than sentimental attachment. This picture is one of those things here at my mother's house that my sisters and I would never be able to throw away. When we were children, the picture hung in the corner of our aunt's living room. It was painted by my great aunt, Herve, who had a flair for creativity. She had a rock garden in her backyard that was a wonder, and when she decided she needed new flooring in her house, she simply painted her old linoleum gray and then dotted it with a variety of bright colors.  

I don't know when she painted this picture, but it was my aunt's house. Aunt Herve added plenty of personal touches, including my aunt's cats and dogs. She carefully planted the flowers in her picture the same as they were in the yard, if perhaps coloring them a bit brighter. She added plenty of bright birds too. Then there's the pasted on picture of the girl holding a cat. I always imagined I was the girl in the picture, but it most likely represented my older sister since I can't remember when the picture was painted and given to my aunt. But I wanted to be the cute little girl in the picture and so I imagined I was. 

Maybe that was the beginning of me putting myself in a story. That's a question I often get about my writing. How much of this or that character is me? Since I did use my hometown background in my Hollyhill books, readers ask if Jocie is me. And the answer is no. And yes. She isn't me, but she's the girl I imagine I am in the story. A writer has to get inside the skin of her characters, especially her viewpoint characters. And while I have several viewpoint characters in Scent of Lilacs, Jocie is the beginning character, the one the story rotates around. Things happen to her that never happened to me. She does things I would have never had the nerve to do. She is not me. But in a way, I am the girl in the story the way I was the girl in the picture. How? Imagination. 

Actually most of us are the girl in the story or the guy in the story when we're reading. That's why reading is such fun. We live their stories without getting all the bumps and bruises. We laugh with them and cry with them and share their adventures right in the safety of our favorite reading spots. I'm hoping some of you will imagine you are Jocie in Scent of Lilacs when the book is available again in March. Before that, I hope you'll drop by Jocie's blog to get to know the people of Hollyhill. Jocie or one of her friends will be sharing something every Monday for a while. Just click on the tab up at the top of this post or go to www.hollyhillbookofthestrange.blogspot.com. Remember too, if you leave a comment on either this blog or Jocie's blog before March 1, you'll be entered in a blog only giveaway for an autographed copy of Scent of Lilacs. I'll draw three winners and each time you comment, you'll get a new entry. Then maybe you'll be reading and imagining you're the girl in the story.

Thanks so much for reading my journal too.