Artifacts and Remembrances

One day recently, I was working at my desk in my home office.  I’ve been doing that a lot lately, thanks to this life-disrupting Coronavirus pandemic that has turned our world upside down.  The office doors suddenly opened and there stood Fawn, with a tear in her eye, holding an old deck of cards. “Look what I found”.

Fawn has been submerged for weeks now in the difficult task of going through old papers, knick-knacks, and photographs from her mom and dad’s house, as we clear it out and prepare it for sale.  Sorting through fifty-seven years worth of artifacts from these two intermingled lives has brought about a whole array of remembrances, emotions and feelings: sadness, wonder, pride, inspiration, happiness, anger, and gratefulness, among others…any of which might be randomly brought to the surface with the opening of any given box.

Hidden down deep in the bottom of one box was this particular deck of cards, wrapped up with others in brown paper.  As Fawn unwrapped the cards, a cloud of memories suddenly emanated from the package, jarring her mind. From this old, worn out deck of cards you could instantly detect an unmistakable medley of aromas that exuded like incense, instantly bringing to mind the essence of Teddy, her mom.  The pleasant bouquet of Shalimar perfume was present and accounted for. The much less attractive fragrance of her ever-present Virginia Slim cigarettes was there as well.

As Fawn held the deck of cards up to my nose, my mind instantly brought into focus this image of Teddy that I’m sure every member of our family will see instantly as I describe it here:  Teddy, on the couch, sitting cross-legged with her feet under her, glass of Kendall-Jackson within reach on the coffee table, pajamas or other comfortable clothes, cards arrayed on the cushion in front of her, some form of a solitaire game in progress, ash tray just beyond the cards on the couch, cigarette between the fingers of one hand as she deftly weighed her options and made her play.  It’s amazing how our senses can work together like that to reproduce an image that hasn’t been actually seen in years. 

Teddy was a card playing aficionado.  She loved all forms of card games. She was a certified “Life Master” at bridge.  If we were able to see the final lifetime scorecard between her and Old Man Solitaire, I’m certain we would find that she had won at least 80% of their games together. 

They say there are five stages of grief that one must go through to successfully deal with a loss:  denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally, acceptance. If you’re lucky, this process can happen quickly.  Done. Dealt with. Door closed. For others, things keep getting in the way of this “process” of grieving, to the point that it’s perhaps never completed.  It’s been over four years since we lost Teddy to the ravages of COPD. Fawn will tell you that for her, there has just not been an opportunity yet for completion of the process, what with a continual host of other challenges, joys and celebrations of life just getting in the way. 

We’re in strange times as I write this.  We’re all finding new ways to do things. For those of us whose lives have not been directly impacted by the virus, life has slowed down a bit.  For many of us, it’s been a time of re-evaluation, reflection, examination, and perhaps even healing and closure on things long overdue. Another silver lining, perhaps?