Minutes, Hours, Days & Months.

Yesterday marked 6 Months since my gorgeous Mum left us. I chose to escape...distract myself from that huge tightness in my heart that, at times, threatens to overwhelm me. Especially those days that seem to mark significant passages of time.

Those days that I feel I've forgotten what she sounded like, how she smelled, or the feel of her lips on my cheek or arms around me as we hugged & kissed in greeting or departure.

Yet I still remember what her tiny, wasted frame felt like in my arms on in those final two days all too vividly, along with the final kiss I was ever able to give her  - & those days I would like to be able to forget. They are not the memories that I want to carry around with me.

Isn't it strange though, how over time one can think they are losing the essence of a person so loved, that the person has been gone longer than they were here - yet at the same time it seems like only yesterday that person left. I struggle with that & I know my children, nieces & nephew do too. Essentially we fear we will forget - but we wont.

In our eyes Mum/Nana was a winner &, most definitely, a "keeper".  We simply weren't ready to let her go yet - but are we ever? Her capacity for love knew no bounds - how a heart that big survived in a frame that small is beyond me. Her often naughty sense of humour was almost as large as that heart of hers. Her laugh, when let loose, was an absolute joy to hear - & that is almost what I miss the most.

Our Winner

So for myself, my children, my nieces, my nephew....& all those, close to Mum, that cared I think Marcel Proust, in his letter to George de Lauris - whose Mother had just died, sums it up very well:

Now there is one thing I can tell you; you will enjoy certain pleasures you would not fathom now. When you still had your Mother you often thought of the days when you would have her no longer. Now you will often think of days past when you had her. When you are used to this horrible thing that they will forever be cast into the past, then you will feel her gently revive, returning to take her place, her entire place, beside you. At the present time, this is not yet possible. Let yourself be inert, wait 'til the incomprehensible power that has broken you restores you a little, I say a little, for henceforth you will always keep something broken about you. Tell yourself this, too, for it is a kind of pleasure to know that you will never love less, that you will never be consoled, that you will constantly remember more & more.

Keeper Of The Memories

I do not hoard!! I accumulate stuff! OK, so sometimes I find that stuff hard to get rid of...just in case I might want to use it again/ fit back into it/ need it/re-appropriate it for some other use. But I do not hoard.

It became obvious when I got my first quote to ship my 'stuff' across the ditch to Australia that quite a bit was going to have to go. I'd already decided that the beds, my big ass lounge suite, the freezer, washing machine & one lot of bookshelves weren't going with me. Some other large items were optional &, fortunately, quite a bit of what I definitely wanted to take can be flat packed.

I was given two options for shipping; the first involves shipping the, lot minus the items I'd stated weren't going, in shared containers. It turns out that I have 39 cubic meters of 'stuff'. Yikes!!

Option 2 was to have a 20 ' container to myself. Now a 20'ft container technically  holds 32 cubic meters.... if you were to fill it with water that's how much it would hold anyway. With wrapped furniture & boxes it's realistically something like 28-29 cubic meters.

Even I know that 39 cubic meters isn't going to reduce to 29 without some really serious minimising. Looks like some of those 'optionals' will be staying in Kiwiland...& then some.

But it's the small stuff that is holding me up. There are 8 boxes full of 'small stuff'.Things I rarely look at, but are there & I know they are there. It's easy for some to carelessly say get rid of what you don't need.

That sort of blasé comment will usually come from someone that hasn't created their family memories yet...or doesn't have a family ( or any interest in art or crafts - but that's a whole different story!! lol!)

Turns out I've saved everything from small beaded felt Christmas decorations I made 33 years ago when I was a young single Mother & too darn poor to buy anything, but determined to give my toddler some 'pretty' for his second Christmas - through to the all of the kids first artworks, birth cards, albums, inscribed books, a few special baby clothes & once much loved, but now outgrown, soft toys..... & on the list grows. We haven't even got to their early school books yet.....

Then there is Dad's 'stuff' - a beautiful hand tailored sailor top purchased at Ballantynes when he was little... probably around 1932, his wonderful old tobacco jar & scree's of other bits & pieces of his that Mum gave to me.

I'd already started sorting & getting rid of the more obvious months back, thinking that I best start sorting things out earlier rather than leaving it closer to the anticipated time of departure.A lot of Dad's things I've given to my boys, really just keeping the two things I mentioned above for myself. Dad was more like a father to those two & a huge influence in their lives. I know they'll look after those bits & pieces.

As to the rest it's really a matter of trust. I thought about giving the kids their stuff, but the time just isn't right.Things that were theirs when they were younger wont have so much meaning until they have children of their own. This I know from experience as I well recall regretting, much later, giving away all the things I deemed babyish or such as a teenager or even later as an adult.

I also recall the feigned disgust & the inner warm fuzzies whenever Mum would whip out one of my early notebooks filled with a 7 year olds first attempts at writing poems or fantastical stories, to show one of my kids.

It's those things that the kids have done that I'm finding hardest to even go through - let alone think of parting with, or entrusting to their creators. Not only do I smile at some of the things that were written, or marvel at the vivid imaginations of the very young,  I'm also transported back in time & memories are evoked of things that I had forgotten. I know when I show a special letter or card written by a 5 year old to their Mum to them as teens & adults that they have forgotten too.

No, I don't hoard stuff - 

I am keeper of the memories.

Impressions

I wonder, if we realised what all of those impressions we absorb as young children would mean to us later, whether we would take more notice at the time. Regardless of whether we did or not, somewhere in our sub consciousness while we are blithely playing our way through childhood many things imprint on our brain & later surface again. A sight, a scent, a sound & we are transported back.

Unsurprisingly some things make more of an impression than others.... there are some that we are not even aware of, or at least later on in life we can't pin point when that memory was imprinted. Christmas brought all of this home to me this year.

I'd bought a few stems of Lilium Regal - the Christmas Lily, here in New Zealand. It's scent is absolutely amazing. I have some growing in the garden for the first time ever but didn't want to cut the few I had so purchased some instead. 

For one reason or another over recent years I haven't had Christmas lilies in the house. I'm not sure why as I always used to have them - even if I did have to pinch the stamens out because my ex-husband complained they gave him hayfever. Unfortunately removing the stamens also removed the delicious scent, but since he was often away I'd leave pinching out the stamens until I absolutely had too.

The second I got those beauties into the house I was transported back in time & realised that, to me, this was the one thing that said "Christmas" more than anything else. A fragrance. In that moment the amazing spicy, heady, intoxicating scent of those Christmas lilies was the most wonderful thing on earth.

Because of my trip to Brisbane there was no tree this year, no other decorations - just those beautiful white lilies & they spoke "Christmas" more than anything else ever has in recent years & I suspect ever could. I can't recall whether Mum had them at Christmas time when I was really young, although I remember my Uncle & Aunt had them planted right along the side of his house for many years & that there was always a vase full inside at their place.

I was more than a little pleased when my oldest son commented on the scent of the lilies on Boxing Day - it seems that the imprint was made when he was younger too.

Absolutely Positively Christmas.

Growing in my garden.