July 17, 2024

I have been busy looking in corners and clearing out items I no longer am using or no longer need or wish to keep—-a child’s guitar, a computer keyboard, canning jars—-and today I opened a cardboard box of sewing notions and fabric pieces of various sizes. In the box were the last two pages of a letter from my mother—inside this particular box because on the back side of the last page of her letter she had typed instructions on how to replace zippers.

Reading the letter, I can hear my mother’s voice again, chatting about the work she was doing in their garden in Oregon, the photo I had sent of my little son David, soon to be one year old, and the problems facing her mother-in-law (my grandmother) because my grandfather was developing dementia and needing more care. My grandparents lived faraway in Arkansas. 

My mother wrote “I just hope that I die in a hurry while I still find the daily routine a challenge and a pleasure.” 

I cannot stop the tears. She was sixty-one when she wrote those words. Twenty-two years later she would decline relatively quickly and die of congestive heart failure, surrounded by family who loved her. I held her hand. I closed her eyes.

I fold the letter carefully. I will put this scrap of letter into the blue box that holds the last of my mother’s papers. 

Not everything is clutter. 

Kristin Moyer