Postcards From Heaven

A year ago, on September 19th, my mom died. A short time later I wrote, “Walking In Quicksand”. Mom’s neighbor and dear friend read it, and asked me then if I would revisit it sometime in the future, wondering how I would feel in time.

So, one year later I look back to where I was, and where I am now. The year 2020 has been rough for all of us. Covid-19 is only part of it, for on top of that, everyone of us has dealt with life, the ups and downs, celebrations, challenges, joy, and heartbreak. For myself it started before 2020 even began, when my mother-in-law died suddenly in December. The new year offered a fresh page, but January marked the passing of a good friend, and peaked the end of June with a sudden health crisis for our son. Life was piling on!

Mom’s death was only the beginning of closing that chapter. My sisters and I needed to go through her things, clean out her house, decide what to keep, and what to let go of. We attacked it orderly, but our hearts rode the rollercoaster of memories, which brought forth stories of times past, laughter, tears, and sometimes an object would elicit a look of “What the heck, Mom?” By the end of the week, when we were dragging heavy furniture outside for the yard sale, we just wanted it done.

I will never forget Charlotte and I getting trapped in my old bedroom, as we pushed and Susan tugged at the futon that got stuck in the doorway. It wasn’t going to budge, unless we took something apart. By this time our brains were in a fog, yet mine worked well enough to be glad I didn’t need to go to the bathroom. But, just what would we do if there was a fire? Charlotte said, as if I was being stupid, that we would climb out the window. Well, just how was I going to get up there? My 5 foot stature wasn’t of much help. There was no other furniture in the room, and I’m pretty sure the days of me climbing on Charlotte’s back, propelling myself through the window, and then reaching down to pull Charlotte up the wall to meet the opening were about 45 years behind both of us! Just like my mom, here I was, thinking of the worse case, most unlikely scenario! We laughed, and if we didn’t stop laughing we were going to need that bathroom we couldn’t reach! Susan was in the hallway, taxed with taking apart a section of the futon frame so we could make that corner. Her mind was mush, not drifting to “what if’s”, but rather making the trek to the tool bag in the kitchen for a wrench, only to discover she returned with the wrong size. Back to the kitchen she went, only this time the wrench was too small. It wasn’t until her third trip did she stop to think that it would be easier to bring the tool bag with her, rather than her going to it. Charlotte said, “We wondered why you didn’t do that in the first place”, as if it hadn’t just occurred to us too. It had obviously been a long week.

The day we closed the house up I took a walk around the pool. Stepping down into the cool water, 50 years of memories folded in around me, and I sobbed. So this was it. Only it wasn’t. I packed up the treasures I would keep, shipped them home, and boarded a plane.

It was mid January when we put Mom’s house on the market. We always knew we would sell it, but actually doing it was a mixed bag. We had grown up in that house. Giant life changes took place there, but what were we to do? Let it sit there empty, fall apart, and fade into the desert because we couldn’t walk away? Though it had always felt like “going home”, without Mom there, it was just a house. We would have our memories. Time for someone else to make theirs. In April the papers were signed. We hadn’t sold our memories, yet I cried. It was over. The book was finished. Only the sequel remained.

I no longer slog in quicksand. The stabbing pain of grief is no longer my companion. I am okay. That’s not to say I don’t get sad; that I don’t cry; that there isn’t a day that I don’t wish she were still here. I have questions I wish she could answer, and sometimes seek the comfort that only a mother can give. I miss her, but love does not die, people do.

When I was in the 3rd grade I went to church camp. I was encouraged to send postcards home. I had never sent a postcard. I didn’t know I was suppose to write something besides an address on it, and “Love, Sheri”. There was so little room to say much of anything anyways, so I sent home postcards with pretty pictures on the front, and signed, “Love, Sheri”. Thats what I get from my mom now. Postcards from heaven, with pretty pictures of memories on the front. No words, just “Love, Mom”.