Musings

Years after my mother died I still liked to put my nose up against the few things of hers I had kept in my closet, a woolen kilt I had given her for Christmas one year and a navy blue suit she wore to work. Both of them carried her signature scent and if I had been smarter I might have put them in plastic bags to keep it longer. But I did not think of that back then. I was too heavily immersed in surviving something that felt surreal. Now all I have is the large kilt pin from that skirt and her squash blossom necklace and earrings, which I honestly never saw her wear, but I know she treasured them and so I try to wear them to important events like my sister's birthday and my brother's funeral.

I also have her Italian cameos that she always intended to have reset. I also had that intention, but I know I never will. Somehow they have become sacred just as they are.

I don't really have anything of my father's. He was writing a book. I had read the first chapter, but that disappeared. My niece and his wife swooped in and it was all gone before I knew what had happened, but that is okay. I mostly think of my father when I am writing, or reading. Learning was something we both shared a love for. My father will always be a voice in my head. Nobody can take that away.

It's strange to think that I never worried about my parents dying. They were young when I was born, 21 and 22, but they were fragile souls. Barely made for the world they lived in and entirely unsuitable for the world today, it's probably good they went when they did.

The only other member of our immediate family who has died is my brother. It's funny, he always said he was going to come back and haunt me and in a way he has. I can't really mourn his passing, because I always feel as if he is  "still here dammit!" That was the way he always answered his phone because we had been waiting for him to die since the day he was born. He lived well into his sixties and his stories will probably live forever. Tom was a character, a womanizer, an adventurer and everybody loved him. (Or hated him!) It was always expected that he and all but one of his five ex-wives and their children would come and sit together at all the family weddings and funerals. That is just who he was.

I sometimes wonder what people will remember about me. I hope it is the inscriptions in the books I helped edit. Those are some of the nicest things anyone has ever said about me and I am really proud of those.