The Stories I’ll Never Know

One of the things you learn when you poke through the possessions of a person after they’ve died is the vast number of stories they contain. That’s certainly what I learned when I organized, catalogued, and dispersed my mom’s things after she died.

Some of the stories I’d known all of my life. I knew that my mom had registered for the china and silver when she and my dad got married, that some of it she’d received as wedding presents, some my dad had given her over the years, and some I’d given her. I’d been there when she bought most of the furniture in the house and the rest I knew the stories behind, at least a little. I also knew about the Bohemian glass bowl she’d been bequested by her high school voice teacher in her will, the oriental rugs that had been bought at auction by my grandmother seventy years ago or more, the old, cheap, dime store glass that had belonged to my great-grandmother, and the vast amount of handpainted china another great-grandmother had won playing euchre.

I learned new details of stories, especially when I was going through the old check stubs, paid bills, correspondence, and income tax returns. I learned that my parents had scrupulously deducted witholding and Social Security from the pay they’d given their household help and submitted it all to Uncle Sam. I learned that one of the women they’d hired when I was very small and whom I had loved and called “Ivy” was actually “I. V.”.

I learned some family secrets I’ll take to my grave, some of them things I don’t believe my mom had even known.

And then there are the stories I’ll never know. For example, tucked in the bottom of a little jewelry case that was on the top of my mom’s dresser for as long as I can remember, was a little torn-off piece of a red and white checked handkerchief. Tied in the piece of handkerchief was a single, old, silver quarter. Obviously, there’s a story there. It was kept by somebody for a reason I’ll never know now.

While rehabbing the house my mom had lived in for fifty years, one of my siblings found another story: the painting of a naked lady that hung behind the bar in my grandparents’ saloon. Rolled up, creased, and damaged and stuck in the rafters between the first and second floors of the house. I can only speculate that my dad could neither bear seeing it nor throwing it away. So it lay ignored, forgotten, and ultimately lost until it was found again quite by chance.