The Memory Box

The Memory Box 

(published in Chicken Soup for the Mother's Soul II as "Cards for Mom")

I'd lost my dad three years earlier and my mom was visiting for what I suspected would be the last time. We still were hoping that there'd be a rally. We thought she might be able to beat brain cancer the way she'd beaten lung cancer, but we weren't nearly as confident. My "white tornado" of a mother, so named because the cleaning product ad reminded us of her whirlwind energy, was suddenly weak. She was becoming accepting instead of the angry warrior that I'd known through her first battle. I recognized the signs because I'd too recently been through it with dad. 

Mom pulled a box from her suitcase just before she left and she handed it to me, asking me not to open it for a few months. I knew what she was asking and I braved out the next few hours with her, only cracking as she drove away. The tears seemed to flow from then until Christmas Eve, the call that she was gone came just as we were leaving to drive the 7 hours it would take to be by her side. I'd seen her dozens of times since she'd left the box for me. We'd talked about everything but what was happening. The week of Christmas passed in a blur. My sisters and I all tried to salvage the holiday for our children even as we were coming to terms with the fact that we no longer would be able to lean on the strength of our parents. 

I'd been home for several weeks before I even remembered the box...a few more weeks before I could bring myself to open it. I steeled myself with a cup of tea (the panacea of all Scottish girls) and sat cross-legged on the floor to open the battered blue file box that my mother had left to me. 

My mother, the same one who'd incurred my wrath as a teenager for indiscriminately throwing out my treasures, had saved every card we'd ever sent to her. The card on top was a recent one, a get well card from her time in the hospice while she'd been battling her first cancer. It was from my sister and inside she'd written a note about how much it had meant to her that we'd been there for her and with her. It made me cry to see her spidery writing reach out to me from the card. I dug to the middle of the box and came up with an anniversary card from another sister who was 16 when it was sent. My heart skipped as I saw that there was a note written in my mother's bolder hand. "Hen, I'm looking at you and Terry and feeling so proud of what a beautiful woman you're becoming. Seeing you with your first boyfriend makes me look forward to the day when I'm sending you anniversary cards too" 

Hen was an endearment that I'd heard a thousand times. Her reserved Scottish upbringing kept her from lavishing praise out loud, yet every card, from the fanciest store-bought to the childish drawings, was etched with my mom's hopes and dreams for us. 

More than that, there were the words she rarely expressed to us in life. She was proud of us. We'd always known she loved us, but in her urgency to see us succeed and surpass her goals for us, she'd push and nag and kvetch. I was suddenly hungry to see my own cards. I quickly found one and sobbed as over and over my mom told me I was beautiful and smart and funny. She wrote about how much it meant to her that I chose cards that were so beautiful and then put my own lovely words on them. She told me she wished she could express herself as well as I could. I wish I could have told her how the way she expressed herself on every card would hold her 4 daughters through some of the hardest days of their lives. 

I could see evidence of her own tears on the card that was signed by her first grandchild. I read of her joy as each of us married the men who would become the sons of her heart. I laughed as she shared her worries for us in a voice I could hear as loudly as if she were standing next to me. I whispered my thanks that she'd left behind a more lasting legacy than anything else she could have done. 

The blue box is much lighter now that I've given the appropriate cards to each of my sisters but there's a new layer that's being added to on every holiday. Every card that I receive is being added along with my own heartfelt words and my vow that I'll say those words out loud as often as I should and that I'll also leave them behind so they can buoy my loved ones up when I'm gone the way my mother's words have for me.