My mother and I are natural-born purgers. We are quick to toss the unnecessary and we don’t find a lot of sentimentality in Things. If you haven’t worn it or played with it in a year, consider yourself warned: it’s going to Goodwill.
We inherited this trait from my mom’s mother, Peg, whom I called Mom Mom. By the time she died, Mom Mom had already parted with nearly all of her 88 years worth of Things. She was living in a small, simply decorated two-bedroom condo, with very little in the way of material possessions. “I have everything I need,” she’d say, “I have my ocean view, a library in the lobby, and a lifetime of happy memories.”
But she wasn’t always so monastic. Mom Mom, along with my grandfather, Pop Pop, had been great collectors at one time in their lives.
The first house I ever knew to be my grandparents’ was called Roseland. Peg was an elegant and graceful woman, who stood nearly six feet tall. She was affectionately called The Long-stemmed Rose by her even-taller husband, Jim. They had met on a blind date; set up by friends because they both towered over the rest of their classmates.
Peg and Jim bought Roseland after their children had grown. A spacious split-level in northern New Jersey, it was large enough to accommodate their children’s families for holidays and family reunions. Roseland was immaculately kept and decorated with an eclectic mix of Patriotic Americana and mementos they collected as they traveled the world together. It was a house full of treasures; and each of the treasures told stories, recalled memories, and held the love that my grandparents shared for each other, and for the lives they were so proud to have built together.
My grandmother was alone in this large, family home one night in early November, when she received the shocking and devastating news that my grandfather had been killed in a car accident. She was a widow. She was only 58-years-old.
It didn’t take long for Roseland to feel too big and too lonely, and Mom Mom decided to move into a smaller place. First, to a townhouse, later to an apartment, and finally to her condo by the sea. Over the final 30 years of her life, and from three homes, Mom Mom thoughtfully and lovingly distributed her treasures among her children and grandchildren. “It’s what I would have given to you in my Will,” she would jokingly remark, “only this way, I get to see you enjoy it and you don’t have to wait for me to die.” Peg always had a way with words.
She gave me a set of silver earrings, which had been made from her maternal grandmother’s teaspoons and a heart charm that Pop Pop had given her “many, many Valentine’s Days ago…” When I bought my first apartment, she gave me her “fancy” dishes. “It’s not fine china,” she said in her typical, to-the-point tone, “and it’s not worth a damn thing. But it’s seen it’s fair share of dinner parties. Oh, Pop Pop and I had fun in those days.” I wished I could have been there to see them then…
Mom Mom was living alone in her cozy condo by the sea when she died. My mom and dad, along with my mom’s brother, were there to settle her estate after her death. “There’s not much to do,” my mom lamented. “This feels strange….like we should be doing more. But she doesn’t want a funeral and she’s already taken care of everything else.”
It was true. Instead of a funeral, Mom Mom just wanted her family to gather, anywhere, at any time, and Be Together. She wanted to be cremated, as Pop Pop was before her. She wanted their ashes to be co-mingled and scattered together, in the sea.
As for her estate, Mom Mom had already designated where the little she did have in the way of material possessions should go upon her death: the house wares and linens should go to the soup kitchen where she had spent so many years as a volunteer. Her clothing, handbags, and shoes should go to the local Women’s Shelter. Her car should go to her Caregiver who had stayed with her during the final weeks of her life.
Everything else of sentimental importance or financial worth, my mom and my uncle believed, had already been given away by my grandmother, during her lifetime.
My mom was opening every cabinet, searching every drawer, for anything else they may have missed, when she happened to open Mom Mom’s wicker chest. Mom Mom had used that wicker chest as a coffee table for years. It was where we placed our drinks and rested our feet. (That is, until Mom Mom admonished us for our lack of manners and playfully invited us to spend a week at “Peggie’s Charm School,” where we would learn that feet belong on the floor.) We played scrabble around that chest and my kids drove their matchbox cars across its top. It held blankets or pillows, we assumed, as it sat right in the middle of the living room.
When she opened its lid and peered inside, my mom caught her breath.
Instead of finding spare blankets, my mom had discovered Mom Mom’s chest of Very Special Things. It was a carefully and meticulously curated collection of a lifetime of memories. The things that had made countless moves with my grandmother; from her childhood home, to the houses where she raised her own children, to the houses in which her grandchildren played, and finally, to her home by the sea. They were the items that had survived more than a few drastic purging efforts as she downsized several times over.
They were, by their very presence in her Final Home, Mom Mom’s Most Treasured Things.
It wasn’t much, and it didn’t take up a lot of space but, to Mom Mom, that wicker chest was Everything: the dress she had worn when she and my grandfather had eloped, the letters he sent to her from Korea, photographs and home movies of her children, pieces of the uniforms she had worn during her career as a nurse, maps and itineraries from trips she and my grandfather had taken, the tie he had been wearing the night he died. Each dress, keepsake, document, collection of photographs, and stack of handwritten letters had been carefully folded, packaged, and tucked inside the chest with a card cataloging its importance to my grandmother.
The most startling discovery of all though, was at the very bottom of the chest, beneath even the urn containing my grandfather’s ashes. It was upon it’s discovery that my mom, and subsequently the rest of the family, finally realized that there was a piece of my grandmother that she had kept hidden, even from those who knew her best. My grandmother, a lively, independent, and seriously funny woman, had spent the last thirty years of her life desperately and irreconcilably heartbroken.
At the bottom of the chest, my grandmother had tucked away 30 years worth of love notes that she had written to her husband after his death. For 30 years, truly the only part of her life that I personally shared with her, my grandmother had carried around a sadness and sense of loss that I had never suspected.
When my family gathered last fall to remember Mom Mom, we spent our final afternoon together on the deck of our rented beach house. It was unseasonably warm and sunny and, as Mom Mom’s great grandchildren frolicked in the sand, her children and grandchildren sat in a circle, reading her notes; discovering, for the first time, the part of my grandmother that she had concealed with such strength and grace.
“Dear Heart, I wish you were here.
Someday I’ll kiss you hello,
then we’ll be together always.”
“You, my darling, will never grow old—
but I am,
How I miss you.”
“You’re always in my heart.”
Mom Mom pared down 88 years worth of belongings into one simple, wicker chest. She de-cluttered her life, but there was a richness to her simplicity that revealed itself only after her death. I am grateful for Mom Mom’s wicker chest for revealing to us what was most important to her: her career, her family, her travels, and mostly, her beloved husband.
I’ve learned that it’s true what they say: Less is definitely more.
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