Yesterday and Today

     There have been so many good moments this summer.  Just last week, we spent three glorious days at the beach.  The weather couldn’t have been more perfect:  sunny and breezy with low humidity by day and brisk and calm by night.  It was the first time in decades I spent five hours at one time on the sand.   I had my Sudoku puzzles in hand and my IPod dock shuffling all my favorite songs.   At dinnertime there was good food and there was always good company. 

     During the last week in July, my son Brian got to show off his stage presence once again with a comedic role in Thoroughly Modern Millie.  He has also begun voice and piano lessons and is constantly roaming the house demonstrating the new techniques he has learned…because he’s good and because he can!

     The three older children each took a step further with their independence and have moved to new locations with new challenges and adventures.  We are proud, worried, enjoying the quiet, missing the noise, enjoying the space vacated by ‘stuff’, missing the space taken up by their bodies. 

     With each thought of what the summer has been comes an undeniable moment of melancholy.  It’s been two months this week since Mom passed on.  It seems like two years with all that had to be done and with yet another of my conversation buddies being gone.  With all the melancholy, though, stories to be shared and enjoyed come to the surface.  They make us laugh, cry,  get goose bumps, and are very therapeutic.  There were two stories that came to me today:  one from my childhood that is a family favorite and was, in fact, used in the sermon at Mom’s funeral, and the other from just a couple of weeks ago.  Yes, there are good feelings and smiles even in grief.

YESTERDAY……

     The first anecdote took place when I was around eight or nine.  I was a pretty good kid who didn’t get into too much mischief, and tried to please my parents whenever I could.  My way of getting under my Mother’s skin was by making noises.  I had quite a repertoire of sound effects and every one of them made her cringe.  Finally one night after dinner, Mom had enough of my annoying antics and said, “If you make one more noise, you’re gonna get it!”  I knew I shouldn’t have done it, but I did it anyway…I made one of the noises.  The next thing I knew, Mom was coming toward me to swat me, so I took off.  I ran around the living room and dining room and up the stairs to my bedroom, with Mom chasing me every step of the way!  I was screaming at this point.  My three sisters were scared to death, and were sure I was getting smacked silly.  My room was dark and I jumped on my bed screaming my head off.  Mom entered the room and flicked the light switch, but the light was turned off from the lamp and wouldn’t go on.  She started swinging at me in the dark, and I continued to scream.  My sisters were sure I wasn’t going to make it through this one.  Before long, I was screaming and Mom began laughing.  Soon I began to laugh.  The girls were still scared because the laughter from upstairs sounded similar to the screaming.  When we had finally stopped laughing and went downstairs and joined Dad and the girls, they were kind of angry that they had worried so much about my safety, only to find Mom and I exhausted from laughter.  I’m lucky they didn’t swat me at that point!  The story still makes me giggle and smile, and made the congregation at the funeral do the same.

TODAY……..

     Emptying Mom’s apartment has been a difficult task, as anyone who has had to go through a deceased loved one’s belongings will attest to.  The hardest part was finding new homes for her furniture.  My surviving sisters and I have all been married for quite some time and have our houses furnished for the most part.  The grandchildren took most of it, and some of it was donated to charity.  There was just one piece of furniture without a taker in the end…my mother’s china closet.  It was quite beautiful and in top condition, so I figured I’d be able to get someone to take it.  It was much too bulky for me to take to a charity drop off site, so I began to call used furniture stores, auctioneers, charities, consignment shops, and even salvage shops.  The piece was either too old, too new, too heavy…or the places didn’t pick up furniture or had several breakfronts and had no room for any more.  The place where Mom lived would take the furniture and dispose of it for a fee.  I was reluctantly getting ready to settle for this option as our end of the month deadline was a day away.  It was a Saturday night, and I was going to see Thoroughly Modern Millie, and the contents of the apartment had been absorbed by their new owners, but alas, what remained was the china cabinet.  I was sitting next to Jackie’s cousin at the show and telling her how I hated to throw such a beautiful piece out, but had no choice.  I told her of all the attempts I made to give it away to no avail.  With that, a woman sitting behind me tapped me on the shoulder and said, “I own a thrift shop and we have a guy that picks up furniture, and we take dining room furniture!”  Within a couple of days the piece had a new home and its sale would raise funds for the underprivileged in the community the store was in. 

     Some call incidents like this one coincidence, and some call them divine intervention. I have always had a difficult time believing what I could not see, but I truly believe at this point that the part of Mom that remains in our souls is definitely intervening.

     After my Dad and my sister Janet passed away, Mom would call me and tell me she found a dime, and then call again and tell me she found another one, and another one, and another one.  She took it as a symbol that her loved ones were with her in spirit.  I listened.  I wanted it to be true, but I couldn’t see it, so I had my doubts.  I supported her desire to believe it was more than coincidence because she was so at peace with it and content when she talked about it.  Now that she’s gone, I’ve been finding dimes…in the back of a U-Haul truck that my daughter Karen rented, on the car seat when I am about to sit in my seat, on the floor in the basement, in the dryer, on the ground.  The fact that I am finding coins is insignificant.  The irony that they always seem to be dimes at this point is giving me that same peaceful safe feeling my Mother would have when she shared her discovery. 

     I accept having to carry on without my parents and sister, for I have so much to be thankful for, but I hate the fact that they’re gone.  It seems like something will always be triggering those melancholy moments, but I am thankful for little signs like dimes in my path and the furniture rescuers to bring back the peace and contentment………