Dear Mom,
I finally began sorting through boxes of your writing and photos, eight years after you died. My objective is to determine what to keep, what to dispose of and what I might be able to foist off on someone else. It’s a difficult and emotionally draining task, dredging up memories both dear and dreadful. Fortunately, I’ve had help. All of your children and several grandchildren have been involved in the process or will be soon.
The boxes in my basement called to me over the years. “You better get us sorted,” they said, “or one day your kids will throw everything away without a second thought.”
Truer words were never spoken. My children’s generations are not attached to family memorabilia. Baby boomers feel guilty for not displaying our parents’ Royal Doulton collection while our children are looking for an unattended dumpster. That’s just the way it is.
When it came to your photos – hundreds upon hundreds of photos – I tossed most of them into the wastebasket without hesitation or regret. You loved your trips – to Europe, around the USA and even to Bali – but a photographic rehash of those trips 30 years down the road is simply not of much interest to those you left behind.
Your children and grandchildren already have and cherish numerous photos of you. And I did save a few of the oldest photos, those featuring ancient aunts and uncles who even you could not identify. The outfits are great: mink stoles for the women on a night out and men wearing long pants and long-sleeved white shirts on the beach. I chuckled at the idea that one day a descendant might look at a photograph of me and grumble, “Who the heck is that?” just as I did with the ancestors in your photos.
Your writings, of course, were a different matter. If life were fair, your writing would have made you rich and famous, a much-loved regular guest on The Oprah Show. Alas.
Some of your stories are funny. There’s the time you followed a red Cadillac down the highway, a red Cadillac exactly like the one you were so proud of. Our family had always driven Pontiacs and Fords, but somehow you ended up with a Cadillac in your 70s.
You waved, smiled and honked at the twin Cadillac. When no one in that car responded, you waved, smiled and honked again. Repeatedly. At first the people in the other car ignored you but then began to look at you like you were nuts. It wasn’t until you got home that you realized you were driving your other car, a grey Ford Taurus.
And your stories of the homefront during World War II range from the serious (your first-love high school boyfriend fighting his way through the Solomon Islands with the Marines) to the humorous (a postcard from an unknown sailor who said he won you in a poker game from a different high school boyfriend – not the Marine).
The vulnerability in your writing, however, is what made it special and worth preserving. You never shied away from the devastation life sent your way, writing openly and honestly about your first husband – my father’s – death by suicide and how utterly rejected you felt at the unsought end of your second marriage.
Your readers re-live the sad chapters of your life but also rejoice with you during the joyous times. That Marine who fought his way through the Solomon Islands became your husband when you were 74. The two of you prayed for five good years together and ended up with almost fifteen good years.
You liked to say, “You never know what might be around the next corner” when looking back on your life. You turned many corners. You got knocked down but always got up and found new ways to thrive.
That is your greatest legacy, the legacy I’m striving to preserve as I sort through your boxes. I’m closing in on the end now, Mom. Life is for the living, and I’ve got other fish to fry.
I’m sure you understand. After all, one never knows what might be around the next corner.
With all my Love and Wonderful Memories,
Joe
Catherine (Cassie) and me, 2013.
Some of my mother’s writing is available as a Kindle download: Amazon.com: AROUND THE NEXT CORNER: The Writing of Catherine McNabb eBook : McNabb, Catherine, Neely, Joseph: Kindle Store
My book, SLOW RIVERS, can be ordered through your local bookstore or online via bookshop.org. (ISBN 979-8-218-43822-7). Yes, you can also find Slow Rivers on Amazon, but does Jeff Bezos really need the money?
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Joseph Neely, all rights reserved.
The Occasional Poem 