Dividing Up the Memories

Have you ever sat around a kitchen table with your sisters and divided up your dead mother's collection of personal and family heirloom jewelry?

I have.

Last night.

I don't know why it had to be last night.  Shit's going down, someone made a call, things happened.

Not that I object to the timing, I mean, it's been two and a half years since she died.  We could have done this at any point since then but we kind of really couldn't have because each one of us in our own special way has been so monumentally insane with each other that it probably would have resulted in another funeral and no one needs that.  I am not without fault in this area.  I make NO claims to sanity of any kind.  This needs to be known.  I fully cop to being just as batshit as everyone else.  Fully.

So, Hey Progress?  I wasn't expecting you.  Take off that jacket and stay a while, won't you?  Please?  seriouslyplease?

There were no fights.  It's was calm.  Like the calm I would imagine at a War Treaty signing almost.  A couple of us, well, all of us actually, had to leave the room a couple of times because things got intense.  Not like heated with words or anything but there was a strong vibe happening.

Sometimes cigarette breaks aren't so much about the cigarette as they are about just needing a damn moment to get your head back on straight.  (small shout out to Kit Kat for that advertising attempt though)

Anyway, we all got what we wanted I think.  I'm pretty sure.  deargodIfuckinghopeso.  And what we were sorting through weren't as much pieces of monetary value as sentimental.  Memories.  She was the same mother to each of us and yet...all your children are individual...she showed different parts of herself to us in moments according to who we were.  And it was more those moments, those memories that we were choosing to keep for ourselves.  To create our own future/past tableau.

Our mother was such an incredible person.  It was a weird process.  Sorting through her memories like that.  Feeling what she would have wanted us each to have rather than picking and choosing over OoooSHINY!  I think we did pretty good.

I got the Ankh earrings among other things.  I remember her being so excited about those.  Those to me...most treasured remembered happy lovely mother jewelry moment.  She was so excited when Smithsonian magazine did their King Tut reveal issue sometime in the 80s and her special favorite earrings matched the picture in the magazine like a piece of Indiana Jones's master puzzle.  She loved Indiana Jones.  She was like, thrilled excited about that.

And that moment is mine now.  It was always mine in my head but her. special. earrings. are in MY jewelry box now and it feels really strange and I don't quite know what to do with that feeling but I like it as much as I can like anything in a physical world my mother no longer occupies.

It's one of those moments like hanging up all her favorite Gretchen Dow Simpson New Yorker covers in my dining room was.  Feels important and anticlimactic and it doesn't bring her back...it just keeps her close.  it is a sad happy miss you love you glad you're here thing. 

Granted, my mother and I butted heads plenty and there are lots of things we could have done better but overall? 

She was such an incredible person. 

I know I'm repeating.
She bears repeating.