Reading: I had to put aside Fingerpost last night to dive into Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, which arrived late Friday afternoon. It's wonderful--just as good as the first book and even better than the second in the series.

Bustle in a House

Our family celebrated my aunt Rita's birthday last night. It was the first time we'd all gathered in Nana's house since she died last month. I knew Rita was dreading this first birthday without Nana, so I invited the rest of the family over and brought a cake.

It felt strange to be in Nana's house without Nana, who was the life of any party. She loved social gatherings and was a born hostess; festivities at Nana's were always a riot of laughter, good food, and family togetherness. But of course, there haven't been any parties at Nana's for more than a year while she was ailing.

Rita cried when we sang Happy Birthday to her. I know she was missing Nana, as we all were.

After Rita blew out her candles, my aunt Sheila brought out a surprise for me: another cake, since my birthday is two days after Rita's. They all sang Happy Birthday to me, and I made a wish and blew out the candles.

Sheila said that she wants the family to continue getting together for birthdays and holidays. I agreed that Nana would have wanted us to remain close after she died. "Mom built her life around her family," Sheila said.

The aunts and my uncle Jim have been going over to the house every Tuesday night to start sorting through all the stuff. Eventually, Nana's house will be put on the market, but it is going to take many months of work before the house will be ready to be sold. The third floor is crammed from floor to ceiling with boxes, holiday decorations, old furniture, broken appliances, and all kinds of stuff. Similarly the basement is full, as is every closet and drawer in that house. My family must have a packrat gene that makes it hard for us to throw anything away.

Poor Nana knew it was going to be a formidable task for her survivors to sort through it all. She had a taste of the job herself when her sister died twelve years ago. My great aunt, Aunt Re, who never married, lived with my grandmother all her life. Her bedroom, the largest one in the house, was so filled with boxes of clothes, old newspapers, and mementos, that it took my grandmother and my aunts a few months to clean it all out.

After that, my grandmother decided she didn't want her children to have to go through the same process when she died, so she started organizing drawers and boxes. She barely made a dent in the piles, though, and then she became too frail to do anything at all.

The hard thing about the task is that, while 80 percent of the attic and cellar stuff is probably worthless, the other 20 percent has either real or sentimental value. So every box needs to be opened and sifted through before anything can be thrown out.

This week, Rita found a few pictures she thought I might like to have. One is dated September 1969 when Rita turned 25. I'm in the photo, too, helping her blow out her candles. The other is even older. It is a picture from Easter 1965 when my sister Lori was 2 1/2 and I was 3 1/2. We are holding hands in our front yard and wearing coats that Nana made for us. The picture is black and white, but I remember that my coat was green and Lori's was yellow.

I thanked Rita for the pictures, and I also asked if she would mind if I took a few of the things I gave to Nana that she had in the living room. One was a small embroidered pillow stuffed with potpourri, which I made for her. On the back I cross-stitched "EPB to Nana 1990." Another was a paperweight which consists of a real red rosebud inside an acrylic globe. I remember buying it in the Nature Company store six years ago for Nana's birthday.

I have these items on my desk right now. How strange to look at this rose, which should have turned to dust years ago but will instead bloom forever inside the acrylic.

previous       index       e-mail me       next