Shower the people you love with love

After two years of living in our house and shoveling whatever we didn’t know what to do with into our basement storage space, Daryl and I decided to clean it out. Much of what I had to sort through was from my parent’s house. When I cleaned out my childhood home after they died, I had to do it quickly. I wanted to get the house on the market before winter began, because the thought of paying the mortgage and utilities on a vacant space would’ve been expensive… and emotional.

In one night and with several glasses of wine, a friend and I boxed up every photograph in the house. We staged it, put it on the market, negotiated a price with interested buyers, signed all the paperwork, then packed, sold, or threw away everything that was left. 

In just a few months, I sold a house without ever having bought one.

In just a few months, my home was no longer my home.

Furniture, clothes, pictures—it all went into a storage unit and was eventually moved to our house in Illinois.

I knew it was all there, but I wasn’t ready for how it would affect me two years later. I started by unwrapping every picture to get them re-packed into sturdier boxes. As I pulled each one out, I remembered where it sat in my mom and Lou’s house—along the back wall, on top of the fireplace insert, next to their bed. I was transported from our basement storage space back to my childhood home, back to where these photos should’ve still been housed. I imagined my mom picking up Cariel and showing her the photos from when I was baby, the photo of me at my first dance, the photo of our family the day my mom and Lou got married. I was nostalgic and heartbroken; full of gratitude for the memories we shared and then overwhelmed with anger that it ended too soon. Every feeling that hit me contradicted the one before it.

Then I got to the shoe box. My mom had this old shoe box that she kept next to her bed. I didn’t know what it contained until she died, and I don’t remember having the emotional capacity to sort through all of its contents immediately following her death. I was ready now, though—excited about what might I find.

I sat on the cold, concrete floor and opened it up.

I laughed out loud when I saw the little snippet of fur she kept from our Dalmatian after she was put down; Daisy always was her favorite.

Then, of course, I was brought to tears. The letters. I had forgotten about the letters.

Once I stopped torturing my mom as a teenager and came to realize that her love for me was unconditional, that she meant it when she’d said I could always turn to her—I started understanding how lucky I was, and I often wrote her letters full of these sentiments. 

An excerpt from a letter I wrote her in 2009:

You always say I carry myself with dignity and grace, but I need you to know that I didn't learn that by myself. I've tried hard to shape myself after the person who I look up to the most... you. I hope that you look at me and see yourself, because if you do, I know that I, too, have succeeded at being a daughter, your daughter.

Growing up, she always communicated her feelings to me, and in doing so, created a space where I felt comfortable doing the same. She taught me how to love and how to talk about love.

Through tears, I read these letters, and after I put them away, I felt calm—peaceful even. My mom always knew how much I loved her; she kept my words right next to her bed.

Today and always, because of her, I strive to tell my loved ones how much they mean to me, how grateful I am for them, how they’ve impacted my life. It all started with her.