Lucky, this point in time and space

Staying in my mom's apartment for the last few days has been strange.

When they divorced and our house was put on the market, all of our things were stuffed into boxes with no real rhyme or reason. Much of it was done by my dad's girlfriend, who must have been eager to have us and our "crap" out of her way, and so there was no real order to the packing.

These boxes followed my mother to Massachusetts and sat largely undisturbed in various garages and storage units as she moved over the last seven years. Finally, a couple of months ago, she dedicated herself to the painful task of sorting through the remnants of our old lives, box by box, deciding what to keep and throw away. Much of what she has sorted through already is here in her apartment.

The things of mine that she has kept surprise me; not because she has kept them, but because I either forgot they existed or had assumed they were forever lost in the chaos. Hidden all over the apartment are things I never thought I would see again. I keep unexpectedly stumbling across them and shaking my head in wonderment.

On her bureau is the red plastic toy telephone rattle that I played with when I was an infant. On her nightstand, an old picture of me in a frame with a plastic Barbie shoe glued to one corner - when I was eight or nine I went on an inexplicable spree with my collection of Barbie shoes and a bottle of Elmer's glue, soddering them to random secret places in the house to see if anyone would notice. My mom never said anything to me about the weirdness of this, but she kept that frame with the shoe glued to it.

In the kitchen drawer with the spatulas I found the plastic "magic wand" I used to play with as a little girl. In a box in the living room there is a notebook I kept during my freshman year of high school, one that I had searched and searched for years ago and assumed was gone. On my bed, amidst the pillows, she hid the ragged stuffed rabbit I slept with until I was past kindergarten.

She has my high school diploma, the tassel that hung on my hat, my diploma from Boston University, a framed photo of myself with John Williams taken when I was fifteen at Tanglewood. My whole past is here in pieces. My future is here, too - hanging on her bedroom door is my wedding dress, still in the garment bag we bought it in; in her closet are my shoes and veil.

If it is this emotional for me to see these things and feel the bittersweet ache of memories long forgotten, then what must it be like for her to sort through the remnants of a 38 year marriage? It must be harrowing, an exercise in self-torture, every little thing reminding her of what she's lost.

She is doing well, finally home after a week in the hospital with thankfully minimal complications so far. Every day this week I have ridden the red line from Braintree and followed the hordes through the Downtown Crossing Tunnel to the orange line, to emerge at Tufts Medical Center and sit beside her bed for a few hours with a cup of tea and make feeble conversation and joke with the nurses. It is not much, but it is all I could do.

Now I have unpacked and organized her 12 prescriptions, have cooked her dinner and made her tea and put away her things. Now I will take her temperature and weigh her and make sure she takes what she is supposed to take when she is supposed to take it. Now I will do her laundry and open the too-heavy door to the hallway and walk with her on slow trips down the hallways of the apartment complex to strengthen her heart.

It's still not much. But it's all I can do.