This is a dedication essay from the Full Moon book the members of my quartet are writing. We have decided to dedicate it to our mothers, and here's my offering:
The full moon coming in the last week of May 2010 finds me struggling with a whole new set of emotions as I go through my mother’s house after her death to finish writing the last chapter of her life for her.
Ten years ago, already a widow for a decade, she sold the house where my brothers and I grew up, built a brand new one and then decorated with all new furniture. I have no emotional connection to the house or any of its furnishings, so the thought of selling it to someone new is not difficult. Neither is going through all her clothes, many of them only worn a few times, or the dozens of pairs of shoes or the mounds of costume jewelry or the new dishes and pots and pans. All of that is just the flotsam and jetsam of a woman who was fortunate enough to be comfortable in her retirement years.
It is the other things that I come upon that cause me to stop in my tracks and wait for the wave of grief I know will come. The notes written by my children and carefully tucked in unexpected places; the recipe cards written in her hand and stained from years of use; the one carnival ware dish from her grandmother, miraculously kept safe from the growing pains of her five children.
In her jewelry case I found her wedding bands from fifty years ago, worn so thin that they were replaced with a new ring long ago. These original bands, bought by desperately poor 18 year-olds, were carefully preserved in their original case, the socket where the tiny diamond sat empty, pulled to put into an arrangement in the new ring. Only a few months ago my mother pointed that diamond out to me – still proud of its clarity and shine. Now, I posses both sets of rings. I put them together and they fairly throb with the ghostly remnants of their hope for the future.
Shortly after my parents were married, my mother gave birth to a daughter, She was born with a severe birth defect and only lived to be 12 days old. In the old cedar hope chest in the storage room of my mother’s house, I find a scrap book where notes and cards from a happy baby shower are pasted, followed by the death notices and sympathy cards and a ribbon from a funeral flower arrangement with the name “Theresa Ann” on it. She never spoke of these events unless I asked her about it, but there in the chest, next to the little white garment that was my christening dress three years after that first baby, was this scrapbook – now entrusted to me to keep.
When my father died I was already a grown woman with a family of my own. My parents lived in a split level which had two short sets of stairs, one going to the lower level and one going up to the bedroom level. Because the upper set was not set into the ground, they squeaked when anyone walked on them. When you lived in that house, you got to know who was coming down the stairs by the sound of the squeak. The day of my father’s funeral my mother and I were sitting at the kitchen table in the center level of the house. We could not see the steps from where we were sitting, but I heard someone coming down them, and that someone was my father. Of course, it was only a split second before I realized that he couldn’t be the one, but when no one came into view I couldn’t help feeling a little unnerved.
Later, I interpreted that as a sign from him that he was gone, but still near. After my mother died on May 1 this month I watched carefully for a similar sign from her and was disappointed when none seemed to be coming.
One hot day this week, 23 days after my mother passed, my daughter and I were working at the house beginning the clear out. Sloan was in the bedroom trying to sort through the mounds of jewelry my mother collected. She wasn’t one to buy or wear expensive pieces, but she loved costume jewelry and sorting it into some reasonable form for the sale was a challenge. When I sat down in the bedroom chair feeling weary and over-whelmed, Sloan handed me a flat, velvet presentation case and told me I might be interested in what was inside.
It was a pearl necklace.
All my life I have loved pearls. My husband has given me pearl earrings and a bracelet and this year for our thirtieth wedding anniversary, which is the pearl anniversary, he gave me a ring. But we could never afford to buy a pearl necklace, which I have coveted since I was a teenager. And here, in just an ordinary moment of an ordinary day, was the pearl necklace I’ve always wanted but never thought I would have. A necklace I never remember my mother receiving or wearing.
I took it out of the box and fastened it around my neck. The pearls felt heavy and cool against my skin. The perfect round orbs glowing like the full moon itself and I felt a sense of peace ease around my heart.
And that was my sign that mom is near.
Denise Kalin Tackett
May 27, 2010
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