The receptionist buzzed to tell me my dad was on his way in. Since my office was just off the lobby in the purchasing department I stood up from my desk and peeked out the window, there he was. His baby blue Mercedes was pulled up to the curb right at the front door, of course.
I met him at the glass doors and said, “Dad, what are you doing here?”
“Mom’s in the car.” He said sheepishly.
“What do you mean ‘Mom’s in the car'?” I retorted with hands and shoulders held up in exasperation.
“She’s in the car.” He’s actually scuffing the toe of his sneaker and looking down with his hands in his pockets, knowing he was in trouble.
“Where in the car?” I said with a parental tone to my voice.
“Up front, with me,where she always sits.” A bit of pride in his voice now.
“Dad! I told you Ron would pick her up. Why did you do it?” I wined.
“I just couldn’t leave her there.” He said.
“So, now what?” By this time my frustration was no longer veiled at all, though to your ear you might have thought that had been going on from ‘hello’.
His answer was “Give me your keys and I’ll put her in your car.”
“Which is exactly why I’d asked Ron to pick her up so I wouldn’t be in this position, Dad, fine.” With a heavy sigh, I turned, walked back into my office and got my keys to hand to him. All of this said with an unspoken understanding of the underlying humor to the situation. We both thought this was unfortunately the truth of the matter.
Later that afternoon I walked out to the parking lot, jumped in my little white BMW with the red leather seats and started it up to back out when I remembered, Mom! Where did he put her? I looked in the front seat and the back seat then jumped out and opened the trunk and there she was amidst all my other stuff. I unfolded the brown paper bag and peeked inside. There was a brown plastic box inside and gingerly I slid open the top and found a clear plastic bag filled with white, grey and beige bone chips and ash. “Hi, Mom.” I said softly. I slid the top back on and put it back in the brown paper bag, folded the top of the bag down and laid it carefully on its side, hesitated, swallowed my tears and slammed the trunk closed, got back in the car and drove home to be mom to my kids.
I left her there. For almost a year I left her in my trunk. I showed her to anyone that was interested in seeing what ashes looked like.
She’d worked full time since she had been 14 years old and then had the three of us kids and my dad to care for. She carried the weight of caring for her parents, siblings and her own family. They weren’t an easy group, none of them, none of us, and my mom was the sane one, the one that caused my cousins to mention to me that I had a great mother, my cousins from both sides have mentioned that to me!
My mother was first a full woman, very adult, responsible, kind, competent, smart, witty, sensible, modest, confident, successful, resourceful, self educated, dependable, courageous, funny, well read, tenacious, pretty, patient, adventurous , a feminist before her time, bigger than life and a great role model.
She raised me to expect more from life and I got it. I left her in the trunk so that she could go to lunch with me everyday. So she could vicariously enjoy a more pampered life. I left her there so she was always with me.
Many months later our interior designer was telling me that her son Christopher was starting a new business. He loved luxury cars but of course couldn't afford one so he thought of starting a car detailing business.
I liked Chris and loved a clean car so I called him to make arrangements for him to take me on as a customer. He came on time, came to my office and got my keys, drove the car to his house where he did his work in his own garage. A few hours later he returned it sparkling clean, I paid him and off he went to his next job.
As I left at 5 that afternoon, I thought I’d check his work. The exterior was sparkling, the interior looked great, and then I opened the trunk. Spotless! Perfect job, I was so happy with his work. Half way home it hit me. “Mom!” I screamed. I drove directly to Chris’ house but no one was home. You have to remember that this was way before cell phones so you could never reach anyone when you really needed them.
My mind went to horrible places. What if he’d thrown the brown paper bag away thinking it was trash? Now she’s sitting in the bottom of a trash can or worse, could I live with myself if she ended up at the dump? Oh, my god, my heart was racing, I was crying, and at the same time I realized that she and I would have laughed till we cried at this story.
I drove home and for the next hour I continued to call Chris over and over and I called his mom, Pam, at the office and at home. I couldn’t live with myself if Mom ended up at the dump. I couldn't live with myself. I had to get her back.
Finally, Chris called and it turned out that he had put everything that was in my trunk into a box and had only forgotten to put the box back in my trunk. I couldn’t tell him why it was so important, why I was so freaked. He was too young to even imagine what could have been in that bag that he’d moved.
That night Chris brought over the box of my belongings from my trunk and that’s where she stayed for safe keeping. I could rest easy, she was home.
A month later we were up in Ron's brothers prop plane. I held the clear plastic bag tightly in my hand, holding some back to keep and share with my father. Ron popped the window open for me as we flew over Natural Bridges Park in Santa Cruz, my Mom's favorite place, where the Monarch's visit every October on a layover on their annual journey. Most of the ashes flew into the crashing waves yet still I screamed, sputtered, shook and cried as some of the ashes flew into my face. When we got home that evening I needed to find a permanent home for her remains.
On a recent trip to Amsterdam Ron had brought home a beautiful hand painted ginger jar. I took a velvet bag with a draw string meant for a bottle of good Scotch and placed the clear plastic bag of ashes that I'd saved inside. Dad had decided that it was just too odd for him to keep the ashes.
A year and a half after my mom had died we moved to Singapore for Ron's job and I found the perfect place for Mom. Yes, we brought her with us...she'd never had a passport and had never traveled.
We had a beautiful flat in a high rise with red marble floors and 5,000 sf to fill and make homey. We bought an antique Persian rug during the embargo era and placed a very large glass table atop. Her ginger jar sat in the middle of the table so that she could enjoy the rug and the view.
Now she resides in a cabinet in my dining room at our home in the desert of Southern California.
I learned that never did I need to savor those ashes in order to be reminded of her. She lives on in my heart and I see her qualities of confidence and wit reflected in my granddaughters eyes.
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