I grew up in California. My first home, a travel trailer parked on the shore of Long Beach. Later a dilapidated rental in Orcutt, and then years after we moved to a three bedroom pink stucco on Edgewood in Santa Maria.
My father a concrete foreman was constructing missile bases on Vandenberg. In the summertime, my parents took us to both Carolinas. But we largely went to visit my mother's parents, the octogenarians.
It wasn't that my grandparents needed caretakers. I think it was more my mother needed her community.
Mother was blessed with good genes and a large, healthy family. One of her paternal aunts, Essie, lived to 106. When Essie was, oh, a hundred or so, my mother took me to visit this aunt. Arriving on the street where Essie lived, we pulled into her drive. Essie unbent her ancient frame from pulling weeds in a garden, wiped her hands on her long apron, and waved, welcoming us to her home.
In the early nineties, newly divorced, and which brought great shame upon my folks, I moved from my comfortable home to a small trailer that I'd bought and placed into the yard next to my mother's country home. Mother needed help with Daddy. Although I had children, and I had been a faithful wife, I was now the single one in my family and had been taught that marriage was intended for life. Therefore, when Daddy's cancer was clearly not going to go away, someone had to help mother. And, well, we were a family that by example, took care of our own. My siblings and their families provided constant help to our mother. No one had to ask me, "Will you go help, also?"
Since this post is not about my father's journey with cancer, or the next five years of a daughter's care-taking, I'll push past to my witness of what happened in the aftermath and Dad's gift, post death, to my mother and by association, his final gift to me.
The evening of my father's passing, a gentleman from the mortuary in town visited my mother's home. This visitor spoke with us and brought to us written instructions my father had dictated. In other words, my father had prepared in great detail how his earthly life would close. He had loved and maintained my gentle mother well for more than forty years; in death he would no less. To be brief here, all plans were made and visible. Due to my father's attentive foresight, we now had a sense of direction. The next steps were taken with minimal effort.
After this caller's visit bearing my father's directions, my mother was left to simply don her silk black dress in preparation for a funeral...his funeral. She next retreated inwardly for years to the grief in her own mind and as my father knew she surely would need to do. Before he passed, Daddy reminded us to treat her with respect and to allow her to make changes at her own pace. I soon moved again, this time to a cottage in town.
Four years passed, and as a result of a car accident, my mother's tragic and untimely death felled me to my knees. Named her executor, my time to serve had come once again. When I was strong enough to stand, I knew the first steps.
Mother had prepared me well. She had told me more than once, "I'm a McEntire. I'll probably live to be a hundred, but Teri, if I don't, look in my blue train case."
I knew this luggage as it was the only set I had ever seen Mother use. A set she had lovingly maintained since early in her marriage to my father. Her packing was meticulous, and when she carried her "good luggage, she did so proudly and with memories in tow.
Mother stored her train case on a high shelf in a narrow hall closet. I removed it from its place one afternoon late May a few hours after her passing and relocated to her tidy kitchen.
It was there upon a familiar childhood table and among the contents of an old blue train case that I drifted though my mother's mind, back in time and through the layers of her life. In her train case, my mother had grouped items for my viewing. Some of these included: (1) Read this first. (2) You'll enjoy these. (3) This needs to be done. (4) I'd like for this to happen... (5) Cards I've loved. (6) For Teri, my tumbleweed. (7) You know you'll have to...
Mother had tied each packet with a small white, and ribbon, and in her neat and beautiful script, she'd left notes, anecdotes, instructions, and musings for my review. Sitting there, I imagined her hands as she had written and wrapped these items. Not only was my mother a stunning beauty, she was willowy. Her hands were tender, her finger long. No one touched like she.
I studied the fine script of her notes. Her touch came across my face. She stroked my arms. I read her menagerie in gentle peace. Some of her notes were detailed to the umpteenth. Some were direct, some her silly-funny, some gentle, some sad, and some introspective. Some were secrets.
As I sat there drinking tea, celebrating my mother's life, and looking deeper into a soul that I realized I had only known in segments, I had the impression that a gentleman with instructions on how to proceed had just entered into the room. Through the contents of a blue train case, a map had been provided. I could don my simple frock.
Published by T. A. Price
2009, Open Salon (Scupper)
2009, Open Salon (Scupper)
