Tag: loss

A Bitter Autumn

My friend died this fall. I bought a new coat.

To be clear I didn’t buy a new coat because my friend had died. The purchase was a coincidental purchase prior to the passing of this dear friend.

We had first met as freshman in college. But it wasn’t until I found myself on a double date two years later that a friendship was born.

Our boyfriends were good friends and co-workers as RAs in a campus residence hall. Later, my boyfriend and I would marry, she and her date that night would soon follow suit. Graduation and weddings followed, then travels together, and visiting each other.

They had begun their careers in Milwaukee we had traveled to Michigan where my husband entered grad school. Two years later we returned to Dairyland, and the friendship continued, grew and flourished. Homes were bought, children born and adopted, grew up and were married. She said to me at her son’s wedding “We danced at each other’s weddings, now we dance at our children’s.”

One of the last times we would be together was at the wedding of our own daughter. By then our friend was already experiencing the symptoms of the disease that would take her life. FTD, frontal temporal dementia was a cruel thief to her, her husband and their three, now adult children.

And that brings me back to that new coat.

I was trying on winter coats. I had selected one and was getting ready to purchase it when I heard an oh so familiar voice in my head. “If you size up in this coat, you will have room to grow into it.” A mantra from the distant past of my childhood . And then when I stopped growing (as children do) the message was fine tuned to “If you size up one size, you can wear a sweater under that coat on really cold days.”

That voice of course was my mother’s. And I am sure many of you reading this may remember similar sentiments from your own mother.

My mother died over 30 years ago. I was a mother myself by then. And her death separated her from me and my need to talk to her about my children. It separated me from asking her how she made those pumpkin cookies and the cole slaw that she brought to every cook out. It separated us when I still had a lot to ask her about, and oh so much more to learn about her own childhood, life during the war, time spent living abroad. Just everything.

And I of course still had so much to tell her.

So as the year slowed into autumn, my friend died. And as the holidays began I thought often of this girlfriend who shared my own zeal for Christmas and all the merriment and sparkle that the holidays can bring.

And with those memories I thought about her children. For they like me, and like everyone who has lost their mother, will now miss talking to their mother.

But perhaps (and I hope) they will still hear her.

They will hear her when they talk to their siblings and reminisce about her. They will hear her when they themselves repeat one of her favorite truths or sayings. And one day, they will be going about their day when clear as a bell their mother’s voice will be in their ear. Telling them what to do, why to do it, or how to do it better.

It may be a small detail or a big decision. But she will be there to guide them with a nudge wrapped in a whisper that they alone will hear.

And that whisper will be as warm as any winter coat.

I’m just say’n.

It’s the comments

My preferred form of communication is letter writing. But I realize that I’m swimming upstream on this point. These days, the most common form of written communication I share with friends and family, is through social media. And with the ending of one year and the bare beginning of a new year, I’ve been thinking about the messages and notes I’ve received through this cyber post. Especially those messages that appear in my social media feed under the heading “memories” from the past it’s in these sometimes silly rarely serious past posts that I review the messages and comments made made by those folks who had something funny to add, or agreed with an idea, shared in the post or even sometimes passed on a lovely compliment. (I must add here that most compliments were about the handsome face of my golden retriever.)

I have been on Facebook for over 20 years that’s four golden retrievers ago and even more hairstyles. And over that time I reconnected with hometown high school friends, members of my church community, members of Civic organizations, and even my own family as well as neighbors.

I joined the platform about the same time that young people started to flee when baby boomers like me started to activate pages. We were filling our posts with pictures of our kid’s, youth soccer games, little league, new grandchildren, and pet pictures. The younger generation fled in horror and migrated to other platforms.

So I’ve seen my share of change in the sometimes aging profile photos of people I’ve known since I was nine years old. I’ve learned about their children’s weddings, the birth of their grandchildren, the loss of their own parents, many of whom I grew up, knowing.

But interestingly, as in all social media, the gold is in the comments. And these days I’ve been nostalgic and reminiscing and a little sad when the comments of these old friends come over the Internet from the grave.

I’m sure I never thought when I made that first post that the people who would read it and send me good wishes, congratulations, or thumbs up, would someday be only a memory, a social media memory, that bring me back to a day when a college friend or childhood chum reached out. I never contemplated that someday that friend would no longer be able to wish me a cyber happy birthday.

I know there is much negativity in social media, that it can be a black hole that chews up too much time and yes, disinformation has also found a home here.

But I will keep on checking my notifications for comments and birthday wishes, and giggles because for me, they are just as valuable as a stack of letters, tied up with a ribbon and kept in a drawer. They are there to reread and remember the college roommate, the fellow RA, the neighbor who became so much more than a neighbor, and those others who took time to write something in the comment bubble to me.

I’m just say’n.

What We Keep, Chapter Two

High above my kitchen sink, on a decorative shelf is an old metal toy train car. It was a gift. It’s not very pretty. It was found abandoned in an old sand box. But the little girl who gave it to me was so proud to present it to me so I put it up on the shelf. Years passed and whenever she would enter my kitchen she would always point it out. Almost always saying “I can’t believe you still have it.”

This past summer we hosted a Fourth of July brunch in our back yard. As I have at numerous other summer gatherings, I used three old table cloths on the picnic tables. I guess you would call them vintage. They were the simple cotton cloths that my mother used. White squares with colorful designs printed on them. Blue, banners and red flowers, and one with a sunny map of Arizona. They are of course showing their age. But I think they look so cheerful that I always bring them to our outside parties.

And now it is winter time and I have been thinking of my mother’s tablecloths and that little toy train. My mother died 30 years ago, in December a few days before her Christmastime birthday.

The little girl with the train, all grown up and married, did not see this past Christmas either. She died in the fall several weeks before her fortieth birthday.

So I am thinking again about those things we keep. The things that inextricably find themselves connected to memories sometimes good, sometimes sad, but our memories non the less.

Recently, I asked some friends if they had any keepsakes without obvious financial value, and if so, what were they? I found that their treasures had much in common with my tablecloths.

I was interested to find that there were overlaps in some of the keepsakes. I’m not the only one who has kept the final drivers license of a late parent. And there were birth certificates, love letters, and even the hunting license of a 15 year old boy who would grow up to be the father of six daughters.

As we make our way through life there are those things we cannot avoid. The old adage about death and taxes as inevitable misses the mark on what truly matters. Memories, and the things inexplicably tied to them, those are the truly unavoidable things in life. And if we are very lucky, the old tablecloths, toys, and licenses will become talismans to sweet memories. Perhaps these things will prompt a smile albeit with a tear or a tightening in our throat.

I’ll continue to use the old cotton tablecloths on summer tables. The old metal train car will remain on display in my kitchen. They connect me to those I have loved who are lost to me now…..but not forgotten.

I’m just say’n.