Grieving While Antiquing

   I love to go antiquing, even if I don’t buy anything; I just love to see things that were well made by craftsman of long ago who made a living by working with their hands. I also love to find something that might be useful in my everyday life that has been discarded or is being sold by a dealer because the owner has passed on to eternity or the owner no longer needs or wants it. Also, while antiquing I find things that I had or used during my childhood.

   I don’t have deep roots since I grew up in an abusive family and I don’t have any belongings from my ancestors beyond a bracelet of my grandmother's and a pair of shoes of my mother's. At my mother’s funeral I was blessed to be given some photos of my great aunt—one of my favorite relatives that I happen to look like – and some handmade cards I had made for my great aunt and mother.

   Last Thursday afternoon I was in Shelbyville, the small town I will teach in starting January 4. This little town about 45 minutes from where I live has many antique stores. So after I finished getting fingerprinted for my upcoming job, I dropped into the antique store two shops down. It was a wonderful store that had booths with a mixture of antiques and handmade items like knitted hats and home-sewn aprons. I bought one of each!

   But three times in the shop, I broke down crying, talking to myself, my dead mother, or simply whimpered clinging onto an object reminding me of my mother.

   I spotted the golden harvest Tupperware canisters like my mother had in her kitchen. I opened and closed the lid, and even leaned in close to smell the plastic; as I did this, I whispered to my dead mother to help me open and close the lid, like by doing these actions I could be there with her for a moment in an action that she repeated a million of times.

   In another booth, I glanced over to see a handmade 1970s purse that was dark-stained and with mod-podged appliqued buildings and words. It looked just like the one my mother made! I opened the top wooden lid that someone had carefully applied brass hinges to and saw the felt covered inside—again, just like my mom’s. I pressed into the corner and cried, grieving my mother’s death.

   I also saw some old Time/Life encyclopedia books on the body, mind and brain that I had looked at so many times at a child. I was shocked how much the pictures were such a clear part of my memory that had been stored away in a crevice of my brain. These were the foundational pegs of my ability toward and affinity for science. But they reminded more of how my father would force us to read over summers and one summer we had to make logs of hours of reading non-fiction books that were at least 10 years over our academic level—a futile exercise of frustration for young minds. I closed these books and moved along.

   In another booth, a copy of my paperback primary reader lied on a counter in a zip-lock bag. I recognized it immediately and began flipping the pages, and there my mind recalled how much I struggled in my elementary years to read. The schools introduced a new reading program that was very heavy on sight words and less emphasized phonics. It was not until college and later that as I taught my own children to read that I learned the 44 phonetic sounds of our alphabet.  Oh, the silliness and greediness of book publisher to continually try to reinvent reading and package it to school districts in a new, and improved way! I had to get this since I am now a teacher and would enjoy showing it to my classes.

   The third time I cried, I can’t presently recall. I was able to tell my daughter about it that night, but it is now a forgotten memory, parts of the movement of grieve that come in waves. You retain some of it, but thankfully not all of it. Some parts of grieving are simply in the second you experience it; they are a piece of life’s journey, a moment to behold in the present alone.

   Several people I know are grieving during this year. One friend lost her mother. Another like me lost both parents. One friend lost her 30-year-old son to cancer and another lost his 26-year-old brother to a car wreck. For all of us who grieve, sights, sounds, and smells can bring those who have died back to mind. Grieving for the dead is part of life that eventually brings peace and, sometimes even, joy.

(photo credit: equivogue, girl at antique shop and antiquing, 2; and antique by Foxy-feet -- all on deviantArt)