It’s understandable that parents don’t tell their kids everything about their lives when they were young, nor even everything that happens on a daily basis. But once they are gone, to find papers or in the movie, The Notebook, to find a volume that tells a story that no one else besides the characters knew about it, is pretty amazing. This is my version of The Notebook.
To set the stage, I was caregiver for my mother for the last 2.5 years of her life. My brother died during the pandemic and very shortly thereafter I went out to California, leaving my Virginia home for 10 months to directly tend to the needs of my mother. She didn’t want me to know how sick he was, that he wasn’t coming to visit her, that she was left to figure out how to get food via a guy that went grocery shopping for her, etc. etc. By the time I took over she was ten pounds under weight and not in good shape at all. She needed major dental work ($6,000) and lots of new clothes due to the lost weight. Of course, with my healthy cooking, vitamin program and general attention to her needs, she returned to her normal weight and for her age, vigor. I felt good about this and we enjoyed our time together. It wasn’t all fun. I cooked, cleaned, took her to the doctor and dealt with all of her needs. In addition, I found the weather there an issue in itself, especially when the temperature hit 120F. At that point, I told my mother that it was time for me to return to Virginia and my own home. I left the decision on her moving up to her. At this point, faced with living alone or coming with me, she chose the latter. I packed her up and moved as much of her things as would fit into her new place as I could.
It was a research project to find a wonderful senior building for her with lots of activities, quality dining room, and people with whom she could chat away. She also loved the porch to sit and look, not at palm trees as she did in California, but the greenery of Virginia. It was interesting to note, that my mom was now back in the state where she grew up. She started and ended her life in Virginia.
My mother lasted another year and a half until she passed due to a short illness. I did what I could to extend her life every day that was possible; providing people, activities and dealing with her needs. Anything she wanted I bought for her. That said, we didn’t do a lot of talking to each other. During this time, I mainly would visit and told her about what was going on in my life. I knew people and places that she’d experienced but not everything that ever happened to her. Every morning that I didn’t visit, I called and asked how she was doing? Then she asked how I was doing? That’s about the extent of our conversations. What came next really surprised me.
Once my mother died, I had to pack up her apartment, prepare for the funeral and send her body out to California for burial. I was operating on automatic putting one foot in front of the other, barely having time to process what was happening.
Only now, three months later, did I finally get to the packet of papers that together are the remnants of the memoir writing class that Mom took 10 years ago. The teacher in the class provided the students prompts and then each participant wrote a few sentences for paragraphs based on this idea to get them started. At that time, my mother told me that she was taking this class. She even read me a few of her writings over the phone, since she was living alone in California, being quite independent at the time. But to discover these writings now is blowing me away. You see, some of what she wrote, I didn’t know about. Such as her pet dog and what happened to him; or what her father, my grandfather did when he first came to the USA; there were other stories about how she loved the idea of being a teacher and role-played as a child. I knew that she taught school (yes, she became a teacher) but I didn’t know that it had been her dream to do so. As I read these papers, and there are many pages, I have to allow time to digest each one. Each one tells a story that I didn’t know about my mother. Details of her life that I’m finding out now, after she’s gone. Stories that she never told me, but she’s telling me now.
What’s even stranger, is boxes of shoes that I have in my closest are falling down. I pick them up and put them back and they fall down again. The same 3 boxes in a row fall down. I put them back up. Finally, I said, “Ma are you doing this? If you are stop and I’ll know that it’s you”. The boxes still came down. So, I tried putting one box back and it stayed. Then I put two boxes back and they stayed. I haven’t tried the three boxes yet, but I believe they will stay now. I believe that my mother is seeing how much I miss her, how I talk to her, look at her pictures over the years wondering where the years went, how my life has passed and she’s telling me that she’s here still watching over me. She doesn’t want me to be so upset. She wants me to carry on with my life, stoically as she always did. I’m not as strong as she was. No matter what happened, she carried on. Probably a leftover from the Depression. I miss her. There were things in our relationship that were broken but I did what I could to take care of her, to be kind, loving and a good daughter. In the end, she told me that I had been a good daughter and that she loved me.
What more can one ask for? Finding out these stories is just like The Notebook. It changes your life to find out things about a loved one after they die. It’s like they are continuing to talk to you.
As always, comments are always welcome.