Fall cleaning

This was the Sunday afternoon my mother and I were going to move her summer clothes to the far end of the closet and her winter clothes to the close end where she could reach them better. Instead I was at the hospital stroking her white and cooling matter in her blue snap-sleeve gown, waiting for the people downstairs to take her away.

Spring and fall cleaning were an institution for my mom, and the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. So after we left the hospital for the last time, and after we all remembered we hadn’t eaten and took care of that, having nothing better to do, I went to tackle her closets as planned. I pulled coats off hangars for stuffing into large trash bags to haul to the thrift store, saving a few for myself.

I figured this chore was best done ASAP, it being intolerable for my father to see her slippers still under the bed, and mindful of the danger lurking of never getting to the job and of either erecting a morbid shrine or of letting laziness come upon me like a bandit, as Proverbs says. Although I must admit I always bristled at my mother’s cold efficiency back in the day. No sooner would the kids and I back out the driveway from a visit to my childhood home than she had the beds stripped and the washing machine humming: “Nice to see them come, nice to see them go.”

My first husband died in spring, not fall, which rather wrecked that season for me, as I always now associate the bunchy pink crape myrtle blossoms ringing the hospital grounds with cancer. Fall is already a downer for some people, though I never particularly thought so. The good thing about a fall death is that my father’s garden is pulled up for the year, so that is not in the way. One doctor told us in the little conference room that her mother and father were both in their 90s when her mom passed away, and then her father, who had been well, died just a month later. My father looked a little serious for a second and then said, “I’ll have to watch for that.”

I told him to watch for the hot stabs of grief, too, that come when you’re driving or brushing your teeth, and also the moments of wellness you feel guilty about. But I suspect that for the most part he and I will just keep doing our jobs as usual, because in his case as well as mine I have noticed that the apple doesn’t fall very far from the tree.

Andrée Seu Peterson’s Won’t Let You Go Unless You Bless Me, regularly $12.95, is now available from WORLD for only $5.95.