I have three full, old-style chests sitting in my house now, ferried here from my late sister's house about four weeks ago, as my niece moved out of the old house on Earl Avenue for the last time.
One chest is a long, low cedar chest with tarnished brass straps and a buckle lock in the middle of the front side – a keepsake container once more commonly known as a Hope chest. This casket-like box contains letters, bits of old jewelry in small colored leather cases, pieces of old calico-like fabric stitched into a "wedding ring" pattern – the hand-worked top of an old-fashioned quilt that was never completed. Other items abound. This chest, filled with so many unfulfilled hopes, was my oldest sister's possession, assumed by my other sister upon Jackie's death in 1973.
A special welcome to anyone who is new to The Grieving Room. We meet every Monday evening. Whether your loss is recent or many years ago, whether you have lost a person or a pet, or even if the person you are "mourning" is still alive ("pre-grief" can be a very lonely and confusing time) you can come to this diary and process your grieving in whatever way works for you. Share whatever you need to share. We can't solve each other's problems, but we can be a sounding board and a place of connection.
The two other chests are old sea chests. These contain hundreds of old photographs, letters and postcards written from around the turn of the 19th to the 20th century all the way up to the 1960's. The larger chest has tomes of old Brethren books and sermons and church music, as well as some amazing first edition old books from the early 20th century. The smaller of the two sea chests has hundreds, literally hundreds, of folded women's handerchiefs – created as hospitality gifts never given, or received by the owner over the years as mementos of affection and friendship. Two very old, small Victorian shirtwaists, whipstitched, lined, adorned with jet beads, and made of silk, are folded carefully in the bottom corner of the chest.
These two sea chests belonged to my older two half-sisters' grandmother, who died around 1967, in her early 80's.
All three chests were in the basement of my sister's house, locked and left in place from the moment they were placed there. Never touched, never sorted, never preserved beyond the simple neglect of the items.
So many items, so many memories, few of which are connected to me. There were few stories passed down to my niece, now forty years old, on what the lives of these two women, my oldest sister and my niece's great-grandmother, were like or what they thought or felt or knew in their lifetimes. My neice has her own memories, already taken from the house, and has no want or need for these. I have too few memories of both women – Grandma Antles (not my grandmother, but we all called her that) attended my brother's high school graduation in 1963 and that is the only time I recall meeting her. I was five years old then. My oldest sister died too soon at 37 for me to ever get to know her in a personal, adult way; I was fourteen when that happened.
Now I have these chests. And bits and pieces of stories and remembrances from others. But the memories that waft out when I open the chest lids are unknown memories that call to me; these boxes cradle actions taken, joys shared, gifts exchanged, bits of history passed to dust, long before I was born. Somehow now I own them.
I thought of these new anomalies in my life as something to share in The Grieving Room. I think of those chests as I sort through my own belongings in a more or less desultory fashion, trying to get rid of things that don't matter, that I have pulled along behind me all these years and stored and never opened.
There are such treasures (at least to my eyes) in those chests and they were never touched after my sister acquired them. Why? Was it pain, or neglect, or a kind of forceful rejection of the past and a willing forgetfulness? Did life become so overwhelming that my sister Sharon could not open those lids once locked by their owners? I understand this, and then I don't.
My sister Jackie was a beatnik in the fifties and early sixties, an artist, art and English teacher, and a track coach. She was estranged from Sharon (and my mother) much of her adult life, until the very last year. In one of those old jewelry boxes, there was a bracelet made for Jackie by my dad, a bracelet I never knew existed. He had made one for my mother, too. Were there more? Was one never made for Sharon? Is that why the bracelet sat silent on the chest for so many years, untouched and uncherished?
There were two old plastic picture cover folders, the kind found in wallets, in one jewelry box. Both folders contained old, old pictures of my two sisters together, as well as one of my brother when he was about five or six. An earlier time, a time when resentments and frustrations, family drama and grief, had not become such an uncrossable ocean. Perhaps I'm only filling in gaps that I'm not qualified to fill.
My two sisters lived off and on during the forties with their grandmother in Sunnyside, Washington. During WWII, their father fought with my mother over custody in an attempt to avoid the draft into the service. As long as he had custody for nine months of the year, he was able to avoid Selective Service. He succeeded enough to stay out of the war, but never succeeded as a parent, dropping the kids off at his mother's and then taking off for weeks or months on end as he made his way about the state gambling for his living. My mother was finally able to gain full custody of them again in the late forties, once his second marriage fell apart and he returned to drinking. Those years were lean years for both families, but my sisters bore the brunt of adult behavior and manipulation, and I suspect that Grandma Antles was the only solid port in the storm.
Now there is no one, or few, or one to care. Too many gaps to fill. Too little time. I have my own stories to tell if I can, to my children. My own detritus to clear. My own jewelry to sort and divide and mark for one or the other, or the other. Why do I have other boxes of memories of other people, other lives, other griefs?
Why do we postpone archiving the past, thinking that the future is endless, when it is not? How is it that the days can seem long or short, when each day gives us the same twenty four hours? Each day might be a day to take action, to achieve, to do the doing.
To get rid of that which we have locked away. To get rid of the excess.
