mydarlingcurse.com

ck and his wife are having their wood floors refinished. this really isn’t news since they’ve been re-doing their house for a few months now. however, the hotel they checked themselves and their two dogs into is booked for Friday night, so they are coming here.

again, this really isn’t news.

however, for the last two years hubbin and i have been using the spare bedroom as a junk depository, a staging area for boxes to be stored or sent to goodwill or whatever charity is coming to the door that week. also, since my dad is “cleaning” his house, he always sends a box of crap home with me. these usually contain unwanted sentimental crap that was important to me in 1988, but not anymore. i can live without the billy joel concert ticket stub, believe me.

however, there are some things of my Mom’s that i’m not ready to tackle yet. mainly, the bag she packed when she went into the hospital. it was the last thing she did and i can’t for the life of me unzip the bag and take things out. and if i remember correctly, we left the bag at the hospital after she died. for some reason, it has a sticker on it, and i’m thinking that hubbin had to go get it. my memory of this time is a little fuzzy. i remember my uncle arizona sitting in the waiting room across the hall, TV always on and whenever i’d come into the room, he’d hug me. giving his silent support. i remember aunt iowa rushing me to the bathroom down the hall. they had just told me mom had only a few hours left and a tsunami of nausea came over me, i only remember the pattern of the floor tile on the way to the bathroom. thankfully i held it together and didn’t throw up.

but this bag. this bag haunts me. it’s this stupid little denim bag with pleather handles. and my parents took it with them everywhere. it was their carry-on bag for all their trips. africa, italy, fiji, new zealand, nova scotia, this bag has seen them all. and now it holds the last things my mom wore before she died. it’s been zipped and in the spare room for over a year now. a spectre of my last hours with my mom.

and today, i’m going to unpack it. i’m going to open it up and face whatever is inside, not just the bag, but me too. it’s time.