The reality has hit. My Mom has until October 31st to be out of her house. She has found an apartment to move in to. She is going to stay there for the winter before she decides where to buy a house. Now the problem that remains is her stuff. We have emptied the attic and the top floor and the main floor is looking pretty good. Most things are packed, and she has eliminated the furniture she doesn’t want. The problem has always been and remains to be the basement. 1300 square feet of stuff, accumulated over 40+ years, all stuffed into that concrete pit, like the stratified layers of earth studied on an archeological dig. I feel as if I’ve spent decades working on tackling this stuff because I have. Emotionally it is difficult for my Mom to deal with the memories that have been laid to rest down there, and so the stuff remains, waiting.

Yesterday we decided to tackle a large bookshelf that my brother wants. It seems a simple enough task, clearing off a shelf so that we can give it away, but the shelf holds more than books. It holds memories, painful reminders of days gone by.

First I cleared the area in front of the shelf and then I set up a chair nearby for my Mom to sit on, surrounded by boxes for sorting. I had boxes for give away, keep, and recycle. These books must have been packed onto this shelf close to 20 years ago when my Mom bought her house and have remained there untouched since then. They were covered with a thick layer of dust and when I pulled some of them out mouse shit would sprinkle onto the floor.

A very telling assortment, these books. It was almost as if my parents had been buried together right on those shelves. When my Dad died in 1985 my Mom stopped painting. On those shelves were quite a few of her art books, left there for when she could pick up the brush again and rekindle an old passion that somehow went to the grave with my Dad.

My Dad had quite a few books on that shelf too, something that surprised me because I incorrectly assumed that we had disposed of most of his things years ago.

My Dad was an engineer, but his passions were Mathematics and Science. I found books on Biology, Chemistry, Physics, and Mathematics. I found blueprints he had drawn up. I was unable to discern what he had designed on these fragile pieces of paper, and I felt once again stupid as I looked at them. I was never able to match his mind, his genius IQ.I flipped through every book before I placed it on a stack for my Mom to decide on. My Mom has a bad habit of slipping things into books for safe keeping. I have found cash ($250.in one book once) checks never cashed, photos and letters, bank statements, newspaper clippings and bills yellow with age. Into my fathers books are notes he slipped, mostly mathematical equations he was working on that look to my mind to be written in a foreign tongue.

My Mom has been searching for a suicide note since he died, some sort of explanation she needs and so I kept a careful look out for anything hand written, even though I believe no such note exists.

In one Mathematics book I found a series of equations and then my father’s tiny cursive, so familiar. It took me a minute to make out the writing in the dusty dark basement but when I finally did I realized that he had placed that slip of paper on that page because he had found an error in the author’s book and after working out the equations himself he had placed it in between the pages for future reference. I wondered if he felt a feeling of satisfaction when he did so.

My Mom used to keep everything, but now the lack of time and the passage of 21 years since his suicide have changed her perspective. She tossed a lot of books into the giveaway boxes, a lot more than she kept. I saw her carefully placing the art books she has collected over the years into the “keep” boxes. When my Mom concentrates very hard her tongue comes out and she bites on it. My Grandmother has this same habit, I’ve noticed, and it always makes me smile to see the look of concentration on their faces; the total obliviousness to the tongue they bite on. I found myself hopeful that the day might come when my Mom might paint again. I miss watching her work. I miss the smells of the paints and the thinners. As a young girl I used to sit and watch her paint silently amazed as she mixed and swirled and brushed beauty onto canvases, secretly envious that I seem to have inherited none of her gifts for art. I still draw in crude one dimensional stick like figures. I used to try to paint along side my Mom, and then pretend that I was going for some abstract Picassoesqe look because the noses were all out of alignment, the mouths crooked, and the eyes different sizes.

I played the violin as a girl and never picked it up again after my Dad died. My Mom put down her brushes, I put down my bow, my Dad was laid to rest and we stumbled through the days.

I was told once by a former psychiatrist that I should write a letter to my Dad and then burn it, or bury it, or take it up to his grave and lay it on top of him. I was able to start that letter many times, but never finished it. I revert back to that 12 year old girl I once was and still am in a way. I want to ask him why he abandoned us. I want to apologize for pulling away from him in the years preceding his death. I want to tell him that with all of the advances made in the fields of mental health he could have been treated for his bipolar disorder. One day that letter will be written, but not today. I can’t. I wonder which stage of grief I am stuck in and how long this will last before I can finally achieve peace and move on with my life.

It took all day but we cleared that shelf. I explained to my Mom that we probably didn’t need to keep my Dad’s tax records from the 50s. I am guessing the chance of the audit she fears is slim.

When I got back to my house yesterday, after I had cooked, cleaned, done laundry and played with my kids I retreated to my bedroom to watch my latest video pick from Netflix. I have been working my way through the HBO series Six Feet Under. I just started season four. As I watched on the screen the characters trying to go on with their lives after the death of their father I was suddenly hit by what might be part of the great appeal this show holds for me. You see, the dead father pops up from time to time, and the children are able to talk to their Dad. He provides comments on their lives and they are able to express their grief and how much they miss each other. I have had these conversations with my Dad too, but they are only one sided, his voice silenced or replaced with mine, telling me that I am and always will be a failure. I ended up having a good cry at some point, pausing the show to wipe my tears and to blow my nose. My snot came out black and I realized that I had inhaled a lot of dust while going through those stacks and stacks of books and papers. I realized that grief is a long process. There is no magical time line, no steps, and no rules. There are just people going forward with their lives without their loved one, doing the best they can, one day at a time, for the rest of their lives.