When I woke up this morning, I had yet another day of packing and sorting and boxing and labeling to look forward to.  What fun!  While cleaning out my closet (both literally and, as it turns out, figuratively), I came across a red, felt-like robe rolled up and stuffed into a small gift bag.  I took it out, and was rewarded with an overwhelming rush of my Great-Grandmother’s perfume-powder-candy-makeup scent.  My dear Great Grandmother has been gone for five years now.  In all the shuffling of her belongings after she passed away, somehow or other I ended up with this lone red robe that smelled like she had just taken it off.  It stopped me in my tracks.  I stood there just inhaling her and the flood of emotion her smell evoked for me.  I relished in it for a few moments and allowed myself a few tears, but not sorrow, not any more. 

I rolled the robe back up and replaced it in the gift bag.  Immediately, I called my Mom.  All I told her is that she must come over on her way home from work.  My Great-Grandmother raised my Mom as if she were her very own daughter.  Though my Mom and her Mom have a fantastic relationship, my Gram wasn’t necessarily the most suitable young Mother in her day.  So, Great-Grandma naturally stepped in and became more than just a Grandmother to my Mom; more than a Mother, too.  I knew that if anyone would want to experience this burst of scent-invoked emotion, it would be my Mom. 

So, I put the gift bag in a corner of the house where it would be safe from unintentional packing and continued on with my intentional packing.  It has been slow-going all day.  Every time I thought I should look up from what I was doing and see a marked difference in how cluttered and dusty and all together disturbing my house has become, I was disappointed to find that nothing really had changed, only shifted.  The majority of my efforts centered on my bedroom closet today.  This house has next to nothing in the way of closet space and so, over the course of five years’ time, my closet has become this layered mess of shoes, hangers, fat clothes, skinny clothes, picture albums, craft materials, and other rarely used clutter.  One of the other things that has graced my closet, again, literally and figuratively, is what is left of my Dad.  When he died, I was left with this wooden tackle box of odd and ends that belonged to my Dad – including his ashes.  In the five years we’ve lived here, I think I’ve opened that box two or three times when was feeling nostalgic.  Either way, it remained in the exact same spot in my too-small closet for five years taking up space that could have been much more efficiently utilized.  During the day, it didn’t even occur to me to move it.  I guess I figured that when the time to pack it all up comes, I would put it in the truck then.

Around 5:30, my Mom showed up.  I couldn’t wait to share the robe with her.  I took her out back and unfolded the robe, thrust it in her face and said, “Inhale.  Deeply.”  I think I took her by surprise, because I saw her face change from this somewhat puzzled expression to a soft, knowing smile.  Something came over me then.  I started to cry.  It could very well be the stress of moving.  It could be that my Mom was here with me when I’ve wanted her help this whole time, but haven’t asked.  It could be the knowledge that I won’t ever hug the woman who smells like that robe and whose very scent elicits a sense of comfort and safety and pure love.  It was likely a combination of it all.  My Mom gathered me in her arms and hugged me tightly.  Immediately, I could breathe.  It was all better.  She was strong for me again, instead of the other way around.  Somehow, handing her something that was so intimately my Great-Grandmother was like turning back over to her the reigns of her generation.  While she was fighting cancer, I had to be the supporter, the strong one, the one who could love and comfort despite my pain and fear.  Giving her back that power was a cathartic moment for me, though I didn’t fully grasp it at the time. 

We wiped away the tears and enjoyed a brief visit.  She cuddled with the boys, talked politics with Greg, and commiserated over the “joys” of packing with me.  I was showing her around my now-empty house, and as she was complimenting me on how much I’d gotten done, we ended up standing right outside my bedroom closet.  Mom looked down and saw Dad’s tackle box.  She sighed.  I said, “I think I’m going to give Dad to Matt”, (my younger brother).  She said, “No.  Let me take him.  I know where he would have wanted his ashes scattered.”  Mom and Dad got divorced when I was eight years old, but through all of their drama (which could encompass a decent sized book) they knew one another very well.  My Dad was a racist and was not sorry for it.  We joked about how Mom’s Italian friend who is married to a Jew will be the one who accompanies her to the lake where Dad’s ashes will be scattered.  Racism is one of the many subjects that Mom and Dad did not have in common.  She always insisted that deep down he knew how irrational and ridiculous it all was.  My husband offered to carry the box out to Mom’s car.  I started after him, when I caught my Mom’s eye.  She was crying.  “It’s such a damn shame.  It’s sad that this has become a joke and that it’s no one’s fault but his.”  I took my turn to comfort and hold her.  We continued to the front porch where Greg was waiting.  My Mom kissed each of us good-bye and shut the back hatch of her car where Dad’s box had been put.  She gently put the gift bag with Great Grandma’s robe in it on the passenger seat and pulled away. 

In the course of one hour, I had let go of two things which each embodied an emotional anchor for me.  It was the right time to let go of the physical reminder of my Great Grandma, not even realizing that doing so would be reflective of the power that I needed to return to my Mother now that she is healed.  Letting go of my Dad’s box, a thing that had taken up too much space in both my closet and my mind and which only served to remind me of the sadness of a mind wasted with booze, drugs, bigotry and pride, was long over-due.  I should have found a way to release that box, that negative energy, from my home and from my mind sometime sooner than six years after his death.  In a way, I feel bad for unloading those things on my Mom.  That’s not why I wanted her to come over.  I just wanted to share a little bit of Granny with her.  I’m hoping that with her new-found strength and fortitude, she will find a way to set closure to both of those things.  I think that I finally have.