Yesterday ( and part of today) I have been feeling kind of blue. I went through a small bag of cards and letters from my mother's funeral services as well as some others I threw in ( when my deceased son was in jail) from my brother who is also deceased and a few back and forth from my mother to myself at various times. I also ran into some letters from 1971 when I was deeply and newly in love with someone whom I had borne a daughter, who would be dead in the next year at age two.
Now, if that sounds like a lot of sadness, I didn't mean for it to come out that way.
Some of the letters were funny ( even the ones from jail) and made me laugh at handwriting and expressions that are now, no more than a memory.
The letters from the "someone" that I love are timely because they ask me to "stay theirs forever" and in my own way, I HAVE been theirs forever. My sailor, jumping off a train from The Great Lakes Training place where he was stationed. Jumping off the train, where I see him again and again in my mind's eye, catching me up in his arms when I was small enough and he was strong enough to lift me and hold me high in the air. I remember waving my hand to the other sailors as if I knew them. They were so beautiful that they made me temporarily blind.

We talk now sometimes, and I will hear a voice inflection, a gentle laugh, from one who has and continues to battle illness, and I am borne once again in the air, waving my hands. Remembering.

Then there are two poignant letters between my mother and myself. So filled with love, hope and anticipation.
She, the stern school marm and task master, reduced to the sweetness of love words that can only come from the mouth of a mother. Me, the world wise, world weary daughter, who had given her some love and some trouble, all rolled into one, asking her if it was okay for me to return home. Five kids and new husband in tow. And she had said "Yes" and built us a house to, like the proverbial Finnegan, "begin again".

Among the sympathy cards were our report cards, Raymond ( my brother's) and mine. I found autograph books and an insurance policy older than me. Our old housekeys from Chicago brought back the locking and unlocking of doors that were made sturdy in brick buildings where the smell of Gefelte fish was pleasant and almost everyone else's name ended in "berg". Except ours.

My mind wandered to photos taken on the ponies of traveling guys, vegetable and fruit vendors who still used horse drawn carts and live chickens in the windows of markets, where you went in, pointed out a chicken and he was executed right then and there, and on your dinner table by evening.

My world was one of dolls and teddy bears and fragrant meals served up with love, where mother and Daddy sat at either head of the table and Raymond and I sat in between, our heads bowed and eyes closed as the "blessing" was issued. My fragile family that flew apart in the explosion of divorce, leaving one man and one woman without their true love and two children too devastated to learn to ever breathe again.

I am the lone survivor. I pick through the memories like all survivors of disaster do. We see them on television every day, going through the remains of their blown away homes, finding an old photograph, a chipped and raggedy memoir, a child' favorite toy, and my heart hurts.
Literally.

I wonder where it all went.
I know there will never be another time like that.
I wonder if, even in my book, I will be able to tell
it all.

In time. Before another thing happens.
And someone is poking through my things.
Wondering what happened to it all.