It was two weeks after my mother’s death, and I was clearing out her room at the assisted living facility. Her familiar clothes hung in the closet, and I knew which were her favorites and the provenance of each. The drawers brimmed with beads and broken watches, eyeglasses and trinkets, fancy fans and shoe horns, random treasures neatly wrapped and taped in tissue paper: a screw, a domino, a broken piece of star. I saw the dolls whose names were Darling and Miranda and good old Betty Boop and the steadfast white bear with the heart on his chest who sat on the bed pillow through many hard times. Now they were gathered together like orphaned children awaiting their destiny.
I approached the task in a trance-like state, muting my emotions, thankfully accompanied by a friend. Our sorting system consisted of bags for the Goodwill, the dumpster, and stuff to be kept. "Take your time," said my friend, now and then pointing to something of potential value, whether real or sentimental. "Are you sure this isn't something you'll wish you'd held onto?" But I was ruthless in the giving and the throwing away.
So many hair ties and barrettes, so many ChapSticks and lipsticks, so many unwrapped butterscotch candies, so many pens and crayons and letters and cards, so many handkerchiefs and scissors and Post-it notes and magazine clippings and mirrors and napkins and pictures of kittens and brochures with smiling people on the covers, so many books with handwritten notes tucked into them, so many purses and keys to nowhere, so many emery boards and Band-Aids and a secret stash of hearing aid batteries. Cash, too: a long-forgotten dollar bill folded into a tiny pink coin purse and 79 cents' worth of change. And there were everywhere photos of people she loved, and they of course were the same ones I loved, the original cast of characters. She and I had sat side-by-side many times looking at those photos, and she never forgot who they were. Days before she died, I showed her the framed picture of my father, and she leaned forward and kissed it.