By Alice B. Fogel
Among the topics related to death that we don’t hear enough about is this one: Things. At least, I know I never did. Now when I look back, I realize that throughout these weeks since my mother died, I have literally touched every single thing in her home. I have even handled, in that other sense of the word, the abstract “things” of her life, like financial and legal matters. Every single action, chore, and obligation required after her death represents her, is inseparable from her interests and the phases of her life, and is inseparable from my relationship to her and her things. They are her history and mine. Everything I have been doing in these difficult weeks has let me hold onto her life just a little bit longer, and has also made me face the fact of her death.
I pick up and hold, clean and consider, each object, from the tiny pencil sharpener she used for her eyebrow pencil, to the carefully chosen, now slightly shabby, furniture she decorated her spaces with, and I remember or imagine its story from when it was in her hands— and then I decide its fate. My mother was not an over-collector, and had about the least amount of “stuff” of probably anyone I know, certainly of her age; but still, this is a household of stuff, a long, full lifetime of it. It is often dusty. I’ve washed just about everything. I’ve repeatedly filled my car with clothing, accessories, kitchen and housewares, books, art, and all sorts of other things—all expressing to me some aspect of who she was, her nearly boundless curiosity and engagement in life. I’m taking so many of these carloads to the nearby Goodwill, that I’ve gotten to know Michael, the wall-eyed man who works there and once did an Outward Bound program at Dartmouth; he noticed my New Hampshire plates. I’ve examined, photographed, researched, and priced dozens of pieces of her things, many of which were taken away to new homes in the tag sale I held. I’ve thought about all the people who knew her—her children and grandchildren, her cousins and sister-in-law and nieces and her many old friends—and which objects they might like to have of hers, and I’m putting them into their hands.
There has been necessary work to do involving certain things beyond moving objects imbued with her, from the lowly to the lofty. I got down on my hands and knees on the area of the white rug beside her bed and scrubbed the actual shit stains from her illness out of it. On the same day I did that, I rose to the 19th floor of the county courthouse with about 40 pages of forms and documents I’d examined, consulted about, researched language of, filled out, copied, and curled up in a ball and sobbed in frustration and resistance over during the course of these weeks, and was amazed to be allowed to file these papers for probating her will. On that day I also transferred her car title, loaded my car with more things, went again to the Goodwill, took down glass shelves in the kitchen and washed them, vacuumed, went through more papers. That was just one day of all these days since she died that I can still feel concretely connected to my mother solely by “taking care of things” for her.
As I move through these chores, I always try to keep her home looking as neat as possible, even as surfaces fill up with everything formerly in closets, cabinets, and drawers, because that’s how she would have done it. During these days, I’ve cooked meals in her pots and pans, eaten in her chair at her table, watered her plants, gazed at her view of the Hudson. Like a little girl, I painted her nail polish on my nails, tried on her jewelry, sprayed her perfumes on my skin. I read her baby books, in which she noted of me at 22 months what she could have said as truly today: Alice likes to play by herself and Alice likes to walk long distances. She was always paying attention to things, always observing; it’s what made her a good research librarian and a good conversationalist. Our relationship was by no means perfect. We clashed sometimes, disappointed each other sometimes. But she would have done anything for me. And she knew me, too; she saw me.
n my travels through her things, I’ve found dated notes that she had attached to the backs of frames, or had secretly tucked into cups and pitchers, sometimes decades earlier. Often these notes directly answer specific questions I’m asking: “Where is this from? Why did you save this? What should I do with it? Who should I give it to?” We are doing this together. This print is for Joan, she says. This picture is for Janice, these are for Cobb. I bought this plate in Turkey. It’s a conversation. She always knew what was needed, and took care of it graciously, and now even in death she hasn’t stopped. Sometimes I laugh or speak out loud to her: “Mom, you’re amazing. You’re so organized and capable, you’re so efficient and thoughtful. Thank you. This death work is hard, but you’re making it as manageable as anyone could have.”
When I began the work of cleaning out my mother’s apartment, and of working through finances, insurance, and other legal matters, I started with the easiest things to let go of or figure out, and set aside anything that made my stomach clench. I’m finding that as the easier things get done, ones that had seemed too hard are incrementally moving up into their place, little by little, everything somehow seeming to organize and resolve itself. Once in a while, early on, I’d steel myself for a harder emotional decision, or a more mentally taxing chore, then retreat back to a more mindless job. This hand-painted tea set was given to my mother on her engagement, she told me when I lifted up the delicate gold-trimmed porcelain tea pot and found her note inside. So it was nearly 100 years old—not anything I’d ever use or even display—but what should I do with it? How about if I just go dust some shelves right now? This bowl was made by Beverly’s father. How should I assess the value of a piece of art or a candle holder, not the monetary value but the importance of it in her life? Its giver, its occasion, its beauty, its usefulness? Does it still hold her aura? Or the love that may have brought and kept it here? When is an object full of meaning and feeling, when is it empty? I think I can go ahead and dump these rusted paper clips.
People have expressed sympathy or even horror to me about my “having” to do almost all of this by myself. But the truth is, as overwhelming as it is—and it is overwhelming—I feel a fierce attachment to doing it. The act of touching and examining and distributing every single thing in my mother’s life is an honor and a privilege. It is more important to me than the actual things, though of course I am keeping some of them. I’m keeping my grandmother’s tea set. I kept family documents, and the Japanese koto I played when I was a little girl. Photos, a few books, some of the art, some practical items, some pretty ones, some scarves that smell like her. Cleaning out her home one thing at a time, each thing, one by one, is the best way to be close to her, to care for her, to keep her there with me, and to start getting used to her being gone. To practice letting go.
When my mother was dying and couldn’t get out of bed, she had a little pile of things she wanted to keep at hand. Every day, while she was still able to use them, she reached for these things over and over—the TV remote, the ever-present lipstick of her generation, a nail file, a pen and note pad on which she tried to keep track of visitors or thoughts. I remembered a fabric hanging contraption I made for my kids to keep their socks and small toys in when they were little, like a shoe bag in miniature, and I affixed it to the hospice bed railing, where its pockets were visible and accessible to her, and we arranged her things in it. These were the last things she touched. When the bed was taken away, I rolled up the pocket bag with everything still in it, and put it aside. As I managed everything else, day after day, I tried not to look at it. Finally, this week, I unfolded it. I pulled out her little mirror. Her eye glasses. Her last tissue.
Another one of the several hardest things I ever did happened two days after she died. My mother never locked her door. I always had a key, but never had to use it. Well, that day I had to leave to go back to New Hampshire for a while. I closed the door and in the hallway, I turned back to put the key in the lock, to lock up her home, the place she’d lived for 30 years, that had no one in it now. Although it was still full of most of her things, I was locking up its emptiness. I knew I’d come back soon, to do this work, and that then I’d have to get out the key and unlock this door to the place where my mother wouldn’t be, where only what was left of her things would be, all having to be taken away, like her. When I came back, she wasn’t going to be there, I wouldn’t hear her voice, I would not hug her, or see her. She would not be there to see me.
Months after I wrote this, when I came to my mother’s apartment for the last time, to sign the papers for its sale, to be in that space that I’d known for 30 years, and to gaze out at the beautiful Hudson River one more time, I carried the last of whatever else I was keeping out to my car. All that remained now besides the walls and floors, the doorframes, windows, and fixtures, was a sponge for cleaning, the take-out food I’d brought for my last meal there, and a towel. I slept one more night on the living room carpet, in my sleeping bag. And at dawn, that last day I’d ever be in my mother’s home, I woke up with a start, without any conscious thought, but with this question echoing: What about the bridges for the koto? I knew, intimately, every single thing that she’d had in that place, and I knew I hadn’t seen the bridges. Where were they? With nothing to climb on, I knocked on a neighbor’s door and borrowed a step ladder, so I could see into the farthest back corners of high shelves in cabinets and closets, although I thought I’d already done that a dozen times thoroughly. And there in the hall closet, far, far back, was the little box. I hadn’t seen it since I was a teenager, but I recognized it immediately. It was covered in worn printed paper, and tied with a ribbon. I took the box, and thanked my mother again for paying attention, for knowing what I needed. Inside it were the 14 bridges—13 for stringing and tuning the instrument, plus one extra one, in case of loss.