by A.J. Morrison

Created on: January 31, 2009   Last Updated: February 02, 2009

It had all happened so fast. It still didn't feel real. It was just a dream, wasn't it? I moved, emotionless, through the house. So much to be done, not enough time. We all new she didn't have the full life ahead of her that most other healthy people do. But we took her time for granted.

Bins and boxes sat stacked where she last left them. A basement full of 48 years of memories. Would their be answers to my own past among the dust and mold? I wasn't sure. I wanted to wait and give my emotions time to find their way. But I couldn't. My plane tickets and my family waited my return in not much more than a week's time.

I plunged in through Christmas decorations she would have been putting up in another month. I found knick-knacks and gifts of holidays past. Photos showed smiling family; reunions, holidays, and parties before she was sick. She looked so young and full of hope for a future of promises that never came.

Magazines and manuscripts were buried in the back. Had she really given up on that hope as well? Just under them were letters from long ago. More broken promises and harsh words exchanged. The man who was her husband but soon after my birth was only my father.

She knew more heart-ache than one life so young should ever have to know. She was with her brother and father who went before her. She was with our heavenly father. Her last years had been committed to studying scripture and sharing love and hope with others. She knew her time was near and she found peace with it. That alone kept me strong.

But still, as I worked through the pieces of her life strewn all over the house she had called home, the walls that encompassed her passing, the days that passed with her absence and my trek to put it all in place, my heart grew stormy. Why did she save so much if she knew it all couldn't go with her? Why did she not tell me this was coming? Would I have listened if she did? Did she tell me and it fell on def ears? I couldn't cry, I wouldn't cry. I had to be strong for everyone else.

My time was growing shorter; the plane ticket loomed in my bag. My children asked over dim lines when I would return. My trifling would soon be done. I sat in front of the cedar chest, ready with box and bags for mementoes to keep and mementos to send away. The latch un-sprung and the lid lifted. Memories. The smell of cedar and things of old. My childhood lay in that chest. Her youthfulness intertwined with mine. The sacred box of treasures that only opened for special contributions or purposeful occasions suddenly grabbed a hold of my heart and all feeling flooded back.

The tears spilled. My throat constricted. Memories flooded and I could not stop. My fingers trailed over the material of a wedding dress, my hands wrapped around quilted baby bibs that once hung around my neck, and my arms wrapped around stuffed animals they hadn't held in years. She truly was gone.

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