The Gifts of Grief

My mother passed away on January 31, 2023. The photo above is NOT my mother but I could see how that could be confusing. That is my great Aunt Franny and I’ll get to her later.

I had played some minor roles after a death in the family. In 2009 I flew to Boston to help my mother-in-law with final arrangements for my father-in-law when he left us all suddenly at age 55. In 2017 I was tasked to drive my Nana’s urn up to Maine to make sure her eternal rest was next to her husband's grave.

Beyond those, I was only responsible for my own sadness and tissues. My mother's passing was the first where all the business of death was placed on my own broad shoulders.

Spoiler alert: Death can come with some beautiful, unpredicted gifts.

When the title “next of kin” appears on your dance card, you’re thrown into the post-death work, immediately.The organ donor operator called within 1 hour with 387 questions about how Mom treated the body suit she lived in for 76 years. Amidst twisting pain, I’m supposed to name all her medications, health conditions, and the age she became sexually active.

She was my mother, good lord.

I don’t know how others grieve but I imagine everyone takes whichever tactic comes naturally to them. And it's likely whatever shelters them from additional pain.

The morning after Mom passed I went directly to her apartment to begin clearing it out. This may not be how others would spend day one, but it’s what I chose.

I needed the painful slog through her stuff to be part of my grief process. I wanted nothing but to be solitary and amongst her belongings. I knew it would be a long, arduous process and I didn’t want to delay.

I also didn’t want her cats to die.

With my laser focus, I began to make physical order amid emotional disaster.

During a break from cataloging Miss Julia books and Barbra Streisand cassette tapes, I visited her jeweler to have her favorite necklace repaired. It was very special to her and she wore it every day for as long as I can remember. I broke my heart to find the chain, broken, on her dresser.

It didn’t take much sleuthing to imagine it likely got caught on the handle of her walker as she bent over to reach for the TV remote or her pills. She hated that new apparatus and it had broken her beloved necklace.

Gut punch.

I also felt an immediate need to get her rings resized. The oldest family ring had gone through 3 different sizes as it passed down from Nana to Mom to me.

Nana was tiny, I am not.

The fact that I could wear the ring that my Mom bought for Nana with her first paycheck at 21 years old was everything to me in that first week without her.

I got a lot of grieving done while bagging and cleaning her apartment. Being a wider and shorter woman than me, I couldn’t make use of her clothes, but I kept one blousy T-shirt in her favorite color, royal blue.

It still smelled like her for months.

The rest of her clothes and accessories were schlepped down the street to the Goodwill store. Some lucky woman in Mom’s hometown was getting the Karen Scott collections from 1994–2022 and I hoped she’d be very happy.

Every hour or so I’d take a break on her porch to pause, send her some love, and weep.

The items I couldn’t bring myself to give away were carefully carted to my home where I could slowly decide what stayed. I knew I wouldn’t find room for the three carloads that eventually landed on my back porch, and I appreciated my family's gentle reminders that we didn’t need another vacuum, mug, or tchotchke.

I kept ALL the Christmas boxes. Sight unseen.

I’ve had my parent’s wills in my possession since 2012. I did not drag out the task of getting into her accounts and settling up. I did so on her computer at her kitchen table with very swollen tear ducts.

I found special bank accounts for my three kids and didn’t hesitate to transfer them over. The middle one was getting braces the next day and the oldest one needed the deposit for her college application.

Once the apartment was depressingly bare, I cleaned it. With the completion of the physical labor and the agonizing yet mundane details, I was able to move on to a more hopeful, nostalgically centered task —taking stock of who was left.

Mom was an only child. Nana died in 2016. Her husband was long gone and his side of the family was off-limits (that’s for another story). Her two uncles, deceased. I never knew their children, Mom’s cousins.

The only one I came up with was Nana's sister, my great Aunt Franny.

Francis Gordon was 4'11" and she was as wide as she was tall. Though I’d only met her twice I remembered her as loud, outspoken, and funny. When the sisters found themselves widowed around the same time, they moved in together and that's how they lived for twenty years. She and Nana were besties.

When Nana passed away my Mom began sending her annual Mother’s Day flowers to Aunt Franny instead. Mom was good about calling and checking in with her and loved her Aunt very much.

Aunt Franny was the last living person who could tell me about my Mom’s childhood. She was also the only person who could put names to the people in Mom’s cherished, grainy, black-and-white photo album.

And Aunt Franny was also 96 years old…This was not a time to dawdle.

I’m not impulsive and I overwhelm easily. I will search the internet for the perfect toaster, couch covers, or hotel. But once I’m given too many choices or am prompted to the payment page, overload hits and I shut it all down and walk away.

However, wanting to stay in the mode of closeness to Mom bolstered my ability to research and pay for a trip to see Aunt Franny.

It didn’t hurt that she lived in Florida and I was in a midwest winter.

I called Aunt Franny three weeks before arrival, praying she had any sense of who I was. A nurse assured me that her mind was still sharp, but it had been decades since we’d spoken so I braced myself anyway. She seemed to get the gist that I was coming to see her, but at one point called me “Jennifer” so my skepticism lingered.

After a three-hour flight, a night in a hotel, and a drive in my rental, I was signing in on a clipboard and walking to her room. This care home looked like a hospital; not the greatest digs for my last standing relative.

When I arrived at her beside I found a very old, very shriveled version of Aunt Franny in a tiny ball, fast asleep. Though I vacillated on the next step, I decided I had to wake her. I wish I had written down the conversation so I could relay it verbatim.

She still had it; funny, sarcastic, blunt, real; my people. She told me I was beautiful and looked like my Mom. A family friend had given her the report that my Mom had passed, she had remembered that information and gave condolences. Phew.

96 years had not dimmed Aunt Franny.

I spent the morning and lunchtime with her and was shown off to whoever walked by. Apparently, her immediate and in-state relatives were negligent about visiting and that broke my heart even more. (Apparently, the one not visiting was the elusive “Jennifer”) She had lost all of her things to someone’s garage (more likely a large dumpster) and her shared room had next to no personal effects.

I am not being braggy, but my coming to see her was the most loving gesture Aunt Franny had received in the last several years.

Franny gave me names for every face in my Mom’s album. She told me stories of Mom’s bravery and tenacity through growing up legally blind. She gave me the missing pieces to the mystery of my Mom’s biological father, something I never would have known and gotten very wrong for generations to come.

I took a break mid-afternoon to have an hour on a beach and returned at dinnertime. She was ecstatic that I came back for more visiting. Though ditching her for the gulf was tempting, I'm not heartless.

After dinner, a handful of guests were wheeled out to the patio where a jovial nurse hosted card games and played old-timey music that pleased the old-timey crowd. When it was everyone’s bedtime, 7 pm, I said my final goodbye to Franny and her cellmates.

I kept in touch with Aunt Franny by sending cards, letters, and some art supplies so she could continue her favorite love of painting. She gushed about our visit during each long-distance phone call.

My Mom would have been very happy about how I cared for her aunt during her last 3.5 months.

Yes, sadly, Aunt Franny passed that summer. And with her would have gone all the memories and information I so needed to hear. Thank you, baby Jesus, for ushering me forward to buy that ticket.

Reuniting with Franny was not the last of the gifts that came after Mom passed.

Franny connected me with Mom’s first cousin in Maine. She is Linda Fay and Mom was Linda Jean, and they were only months apart in age. I found her on Facebook and we later connected in person. She relayed stories of their summers together on the beach in York, Maine. Linda Fay told me about all my long, lost relatives up north.

Lastly, and maybe most importantly, Franny connected me to a relative who is a realtor in Florida. I don’t care how distant…I’ll be calling her in 10 years for a hookup.

Mom’s passing took so much away, but yet continues to give.