Cleaning Out My Mother's House

Among my many poignant moments last week in Salt Lake was cleaning out my mother's house. During the winter, the basement was flooded--just enough to leave a heavy mildew smell and turn many books and papers to moldly, wet messes. Thus, my siblings have decided to paint the house, recarpet and retile the bathrooms in preparation for selling the house sometime in the future. In some ways it is tender to look at boxes that contain a lifetime of experience, but in other ways it reminds me of the great hope in the future that we all have beyond this life. Things seem to take their proper place as you look back on them. In my mother's boxes are greeting cards from birthdays and anniversaries, notes of loves from grandchildren and brothers and sisters. She has hundreds of newspaper clippings, information she found valuable and wanted to keep and file, and scraps of paper with scribblings of her thoughts. Mom has always been an excellent writer and, in fact, yearned to write more than she did. Of all the stuff in her boxes, her writing is, to me, by far the most valuable because it captures the essence of her, which is what we want to hold on to and remember. I brought a suitcase of her writing home, including letters, and I am going to begin a project of typescripting them, so that we can create a book for her children and grandchildren, a remembrance of her vibrant life. It makes me happy to be able to do something for my mother because, living in Virginia I am not able to take care of her now. Sorting through her things, I was reminded that the most valuable thing we can leave our posterity is our journal. I value every word she wrote.