The Silence in Mom's House

I look around Mom’s living room and eight Emily Dickinson lines I taught for fifteen years in my American Literature class come to mind from memory.

The bustle in a house
The morning after death
Is solemnest of industries
Enacted upon earth.
The sweeping up the heart
And putting love away
We shall not want to use again
Until eternity. .....Emily Dickinson

This is not the morning after death--unless I were to spell it m-o-u-r-n-i-n-g, and even then I only sense the solemness not the sadness I have some days. I’m sitting to write from Mom's davenport for perhaps the last time. Tomorrow, bright and early, all of my siblings are meeting here at Mom’s house to work--sorting, cleaning, hauling. You know... "the bustle in the house."
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My sister and sisters-in-law have already done a great deal of the work, and the house looks somewhat like an estate sale in progress. Most of the horizontal surfaces are full of knick-knacks, framed pictures, and what not. But for the moment, we’re not planning an estate sale. We’re just sorting and organizing so family members can pick keepsakes, donate to charities, etc. When that's done there may still be so much left that we will decide to have a sale. The five of us will talk it over as we work tomorrow.

I missed Picture Day at scnool today to travel here from west Michigan. Maybe I'll just slip last year's picture in the yearbook. Don't you wish not aging was that simple?

My sister Kathy and I worked up in the walk-up attic all afternoon. Our final job was going through Mom’s cedar chest. It was packed to the top, but the strata had no particular chronological order. In a random sort of way, each layer revealed the history of the 20th Century according to Mom. Things in the mix dated from before her birth to the mid ‘90’s. There did not seem to be anything inside from recent years. Maybe she stopped gathering momentos for the cedar chest after Dad died in '95. Or maybe it's because the attic steps became harder for her to climb. Or maybe it's because the chest was buried in seasonal decorations, making it hard to open the lid.

Though neither of us had been in the cedar chest for many years, we remembered what most of the items were and why they meant something to Mom. There were tons of cards and letters from us kids when we were away at college. We sorted items into five piles, according to who they were most connected to. There was a faded envelope with a lock of Jimmy’s hair from his first haircut. The string of tiny pearls Dad gave Mom for their wedding. Mom’s wedding dress (and left-over printed napkins from the reception). An old Bible of Dad's (six others are on the bed downstairs). Paul’s Cub Scout neckerchief. All of our report cards. [I got a D in English in 7th grade! Yikes. Don’t tell anyone.]

The two most surprising treasures I found were: A United States Savings Bond for $25 in my name from July 1974. It was a graduation gift from my Uncle Roy in Pennsylvania. I will scan it, photograph it for nostalgia sake, and take it to the bank. I wonder how much it’s worth. Oh, I forgot… I can probably Google it. I‘ll do that tonight at my sister‘s house. [So I Googled it after writing this and found these two facts. “E Bonds issued December 1965 - June 1980 earn interest for 30 years.” And better yet the semi-annually accrued APR varies from 3.98% to 6%. That means it didn't quit earning interest until 2004. So that $25 graduation gift should be worth .... hmmm... let me think. Did I mention I also got a D in 7th grade math ?]

The other treasure was far more valuable to me: a handwritten scrap of paper that I knew existed because Mom told me about it when we wrote the Duncan Phyfe story last year, but I FOUND IT IN THE CEDAR CHEST. You can't see me, but I'm smiling. What could make me smile that big? Dad’s handwritten expense log of their honeymoon. Do you remember the chapter called “The Hotel’s Name is Long Forgotten.” Well guess what? It was called the Greystone Hotel. Remember how Dad asked Mom to stand back as he “checked in” so he could try to get a deal and then the room was a dump but then the desk clerk gave them the “honeymoon suite” for the same price? Well guess how much the room was… $6.25 in 1951. So just in case any of you thought I was making this stuff up--now you know. I can prove it. Dad kept records of everything. By the way, I'll be bringing home the Duncan Phyfe myself for real this weekend.

I wasn't sure I'd be able to get away from school today so only Kathy knew I might be coming. As it turns out all of my siblings have other engagements tonight. Even Julie and Natalie had engagements that kept them back in west Michigan. So I'm sitting in Mom's living room alone. I’d hoped to spend some personal quiet time here in the house. Not working, or sorting… we do that in pairs, but just writing for a few hours. So this worked out perfectly. I’m sitting at the same davenport where I wrote that piece about the wedding cake two years ago.

The main difference between that morning and this evening is obvious: the house is quiet. The coffee pot is not sputtering. I cannot hear Mom praying through the bedroom door. Funny that I can write about it without feeling sad. There are days, even now seven months since her death, that grief seems to come from nowhere. Yet here I sit, alone in the house we built with Dad all those years ago, the house I came home to in college, the house I left when I married in 1980, the house my children came to visit Grandma and Grandpa for countless Christmas Breaks and summer vacations... here I sit. My eyes are clear, and the only emotion I sense at the moment is a faint but lingering sense of “home.”
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I hope to post "Unsettled" Chapter Seven: "The Virtue of Reality" Sunday or Monday night.