My Mother's Life - a eulogy My Mother's Life has been reduced to paper; Files and boxes, notes and old cards, Here, there, and everywhere, tumbled together In drawers and closets and surprising places That catch me unawares and stop. The furniture and pictures, not so surprising They are more familiar, seen every day Unnoticed, in her home, save when they were new. The kitchen table with the mismatched leg She paid too much for it and the chairs Were never very strong, and have been cast aside Scattered here and there for guests With warnings to be careful, don't lean back  They were one of the last things she bought Maybe a foreshadowing of when she herself Would be too weak to bear her own weight. This house was meant to be hers and mine, A place for her to rest and me to care for her, With the demon child in the suite, to watch the days. My mother hated the thought that she was no longer Independent and whole. She never wanted to move. She was frightened to be alone, at night Fearing she might take her last breath with no one to hear And so unwillingly, she came to live with me But never ungraciously or ungrateful, but I wonder If in taking her from her home, we did not break something More fragile than she herself, in telling her her strength Was not enough any longer, when for years She had been the rock in our family and the anchor. We tore her moorings free and she drifted A few months, no more, before she was cast upon a shore Battered by strong winds and weakened by the cancer in her bones. Her furniture made it into this house, to be arranged and settled But she never saw it here, never knew that I had set it up Familiar as her own home -- her sofa and chairs and the great hutch Holding what remnants of her own mother's china She had been able to save, and the lighthouses she loved, everywhere. The lighthouses are mostly gone, the pictures too; Divided evenly between siblings and friends as reminders A legacy of sorts, so she could be seen long after she was gone And now my closets and dressers and cabinets hold her papers And her trinkets and the silly things she saved, like stuffed animals She swore were for the grandchildren, but which she treasured For their softness and their silly expressions and for memories Of where she was when she got them and with who. These things I touch and put away, I don't have the stories for. The ones I do, I will keep, no doubt But eventually my own memories will fade A year has passed and only now can I look and touch  And not be haunted, worried if there are things  She would have wanted me to have, but no time to tell me Scared if I give away too much or cast it off That some part of her will be lost to me forever. I bought this house for her, but she was never here Save in the evening after the funeral When every voice spoke of her with affection. That is what I hope lingers, amid the papers and boxes Some fragment of how I loved her and she me Her youngest daughter, the one least like her And yet, my best friend, who I lost with my mother Two blows in one that still doesn't feel quite real. Is this part of us? I can only ask As another box is filled with scraps and pieces That are nothing of me but a part of her. The white wicker is no part of me, not my style  And so hides, in the basement, wrapped carefully in plastic Checked for mold, promised to the grandchild Whose wedding her Nana never saw, nor met the young man Who gave her a different name from her grandmother's. Will I know when I've discarded enough? Or will I regret that last donation to Goodwill, Realizing too late, it was too much. The file cabinet, where she so carefully indexed All the bits of her life, from policies to loan papers Taxes and her military discharge, the clippings from her sister Letters and school projects, finger-painting and birth records From the children she raised and loved and sacrificed for. My siblings have their own children now and save All the same things my mother did, unknowing Their children will one day be forced to choose. In this one room, where I sit, there is little of my mother It is the smallest room in the house, mostly devoid of her Where I spend most of my time, except in sleeping When I dream of her and wake, not so often now At 4 a.m. when my sister called to tell me. She was not in my home when she died, But in a hospice bed, a few miles only Lost in the drugs that eased her pain but not alone. My Mother's life was so much bigger than words could describe She was no scientist, or novelist, but a civil servant.  I have the plaque from when she retired, and her golf clubs Given by co-workers and friends and bosses who saw her differently A friend to them, and that part I understood. Death has been a frequent visitor to my family This last year, taking away a part of my family's history And leaving us with only the scraps of their lives. This year will be the year, I think When I finally must separate what was from what will be To close off those small windows into my mother's life Where I cannot see clearly and only fret about what I might be missing. When I realize that her things are not her and never were. My mother's house was brighter than mine, The light filling rooms and touching on glass vases Sparkling like champagne, a celebration. My house is more of grief, comforting in its darkness But to step outside is to see sunshine and I wonder When I've finally sorted and saved, discarded and enshrined If my house will seem brighter too. But I fear to lose the shadows, unwilling to free her ghost. It may be that when I stop sorting and let the dust settle, On papers and trinkets, when it goes undisturbed for months, That I will know her ghost has left me anyway.     Maralyn J. Watts - May 5, 1932 - February 24, 2003

© 2004 v.a.watts