My Grandmother, Ethel

The second entry in my mother’s diary jumped an entire year. I must face it; she wasn’t really the diary type. Living with her own mother all her life, (even after she married), she had left the historian-ship to her. My grandmother was quite good at it, quoting names and telling stories until they marched through my head like antique tin soldiers. But my mother, not so much.

My mother, Mary Elizabeth

“01/10/2001…”

I notice her handwriting has become shaky since the last year.

“…The cobra candlestick, Ethel bought after the Lewis and Clark World Fair in 1904. It was in the Chinese exhibit, and after the fair, a lot of items were sold or auctioned…

…The French clock was a wedding present to my grandmother, Mary Lucy Gilbert Mackey- married just before the civil war. 186-?”

She is finding the need to catalogue. Has she foreseen her death in a little under two years? Not yet moved into the assisted living facility where she finished her days like a snail pulled from its shell. A stoic and logical snail, knowing it was the best place for her, but a snail all the same.

Or am I projecting? Did she enjoy the catered dinners and laundry service? Was the comradery of the other residents encouraging in some way? I just assume she would have rather remained in the house her grandfather built, even as it crumbled down around her. But I cannot see through her eyes.

Back to the candlestick and the clock. Why those two items? Were they most important to her or just the beginning of a list she never finished?

I still have them.