The keeper of things

How can a person want something and dread it just as much?

For weeks I have looked forward to the eight days removed from responsibilities that I am now at the tail end of – my plan was to write. I’ve had the time. I kept reminding myself to embrace the quiet, brew a pot of coffee and sit down in front of this keyboard just as I am now. Nothing has prevented me except fear. If I sit down and write, what might come out? And that’s what I want ultimately. I want it OUT of me. I NEED it out of me. I just don’t want to do what it takes because it’s big, and bad, and scary.

I pride myself on not having feelings. You can’t touch me. I do not shed tears.  I do not look back when I walk away. I do not share remorse and regret. That wall is so thick and so tall, good luck buddy.

But lets be honest… it’s feelings that built that wall and it is feelings that keep that wall there.

A great many things have happened since I last touched my journal. Things that have forever changed my path, some of it bad, some of it good. The thought of starting where I left off is a bit daunting and to be honest if I told myself, or anyone else who might happen upon my writing, that was my plan, I would fail us both. I imagine these things will come out in pieces, as I let them.

Here is a snippet from today:

The past three days I have been going through plastic totes full of pictures, nick-knacks, journals, and other fabrics of what was once my moms existence on this planet. Her ashes reside in a small cherry-wood urn only a few feet away on a shelf. Funnily enough, right beside her is my father’s urn. Long ago I promised her that they would be kept apart until I could bring myself to scatter their ashes. A reminds me every time we go into that room how pissed she would be, or is, to know their final resting places are almost touching. I chuckle when he reminds me but then ultimately shrug it off. They’re both gone and their essence is no longer attached to the physical aspects of this world or the remnants of what was once their human vessel. Right now my main goal is to keep their remains safe and up and away from my toddler’s curious little hands, even if that places them side by side, in a locked room, for the time being. They’ll get over it.

Anyway, I digress. (Man, no one warns you that once you have a kid you completely lose your mind and the ability to focus. I mean, what the hell?)

I thought last year as we wrapped up the things I thought I  wanted to keep or wasn’t quite ready to donate to Goodwill, had been cleaned and wiped down pretty thoroughly. She was a lifelong smoker and her things were caked with years of her bad habit and dust. Each tote I opened today though wreaked of smoke. The items inside, although wrapped in tissue paper, again in bubble wrap, and finally in packing tape, smelled like old cigarette smoke and loss. I didn’t even know loss had a smell but it does. It smells old, dusty, confined, and just… forgotten.

As I unwrapped each thing, trying to decipher if I truly wanted to keep the item, I was instantly flooded with where it came from, why she had it, why she kept it, what it meant to her, where I was in my life when she collected it, who it had belong to beforehand, and so on and so on… I asked myself, if I get rid of these things, these ugly old porcelain cats, and fake blue and white French figurines, will I be getting rid of her too? Will I miss that smell in 10 years when I open the tote again to run my fingers over these things that were priceless to her?

When my little is grown, and he opens the tote, will he smell what I smell? Or will he wrinkle his cute little -although I guess by then, manly- nose up, consider it junk and set it by the curb for the next trash pick up? Will trash pick up even be a thing in 2040? Holy cow…He wont care about these things.

A tells me to hold on to them longer, there is no mad rush to get rid of anything. One day we will have a place big enough to display some of my mom’s things and our little will be old enough to know to leave them alone. He’s so understanding and patient. He is a good man.

I am not a keeper of things though, not like she was. Probably because she was….

I have consolidated everything to one 40 gallon grey tote. My mom’s 57 years on this planet can be summed up inside.  Like the coffee mug I gave her that says “New Grandma” on it and that’s how I told her I was pregnant, or the musical angel that came with the plant arrangement from her own mother’s funeral, or the crystal basket candy bowl from the 70’s that belonged to her parents, the nativity scene she built through selling Avon and collecting one piece at a time until she had the whole thing – sometime back in the early 80’s, a clay girl I made when I was in 1st grade, painted pink, and carved “I love mommy” with a tooth-pick while it was still wet…

I think I have kept the things that meant the most to her while she was here on this planet. These are the things I kept her surrounded with to  jog her memory or bring her comfort in her final year. I guess these are the things that make me think of her when I think of them. Maybe these are the stories I tell my little so he can carry on the legacy too. Or maybe he wont. I will hold on to them for now though..