The Stuff You Keep

Two days before she died, Mom was rushed to the emergency room when her blood pressure plummeted right in front of her oncologist.

I had gone along, and I followed her to the ER, trying--unsuccessfully--to keep from crying. The ER team rushed her into a bay and got to work, a team of people moving gracefully around Mom on her gurney, never bumping into each other, never raising their voices. They just calmly hooked her up, hydrated her, and got her back to her most recent normal: an advanced cancer patient on a feeding tube, needing IV fluids. A shadow of her former self, in every way except personality.

Oh, the personality was intact, indeed.

As she perked up, most of the team left to attend other patients. One nurse remained, puttering around. Mom saw me, sitting on the only chair in the room, sobbing. She smiled at me from behind the oxygen mask, and I got up to stand next to her bed.

As I took her hand, she smiled again, and told me, "You're a tough little broad." A laugh-sob jerked from my throat, and I shakily replied, "I don't feel like it right now."

A few days later, I was planning her funeral, and discussing with Dad what we would do with her things. The jewelry, she wanted me to take. Her clothing should go to a local thrift store called The Salt Mine, which benefits people in need in the community. Other stuff could be divided between Aaron and I, or donated.

In the last several months, I've mused over the strangeness of giving away all of Mom's possessions. How a Swarkovski crystal vase means nothing to me, but a well-worn red hat I bought Mom as her hair started to thin from chemo, which she wore until the night she died, means the world. Her diamond ring feels too heavy on my hand, but her simple ruby and the tiny band studded with diamonds that she wore to the end feel natural.

The stuff you keep. The stuff you don't.

It's all just...stuff. And yet, some of it has tremendous value, while the rest of it can just be given away. As I said to Dad today, as we went through some of the china and serving dishes she held on to for fifty years of marriage, "None of this brings her back."

It doesn't bring her back, but it still hurts a little every time we take more stuff to The Salt Mine, or to Field Haven Marketplace (how Mom would love that they are making money for the cats off her things!). We can't keep everything, and Dad and I both believe that if we can give new life to her clothes, and if someone who genuinely needs them can benefit, we are honoring Mom in the best possible way.

It simply can't be helped that this whole process feels so strange.

I drove home today, with a banker's box full of milk glass and Grandma's crocheted doilies, and mused over the stuff I have kept. Some of the milk glass will go into my personal collection, and I'll sell the rest.

It's just stuff.

But forever, I will keep the memory of my mom, so sick, near the end of her life, smiling at me and reminding me I'm tough. That is definitely something to keep.