When I’m Dead and Gone
Becky R.


Come on in. The front door is rarely locked. Luna and Merlin are all bark. You will have lifelong friends if you pet Merlin for about an hour, and throw a toy for Luna for twice that long. Yes, the mantel in the entry is gorgeous. It is Birds Eye maple, shipped from the east coast to Honey Grove Texas in the middle 1800’s. It surrounded one of four large fireplaces in the plantation home my grandparents lived in before they built the brick home next to it, where they lived as long as I knew them.

Art will be in his command center, busying himself with god-knows-what on the computer. He will say he is doing okay, but don’t you believe it. Stop by often to get him outside.

You’re going upstairs? I’m not sure I’m ready for that. Oh well, go ahead. Might as well get it over with. What is it about bathroom drawers that attract snoopers so? Yes, that’s make-up: foundation, a few lip glosses that are basically the same color, even a palette of eye shadows – neutral colors, of course. I can admit it now. I fell for the delusions of younger looking skin, concealing wrinkles, and brightening ageing eyelids – all to no avail. For one thing, applying all that stuff takes time; morning time that I would rather spend looking out a window, or sleeping. It also requires skills I never learned. One eyelid always ended up with a fat, crooked glob of eyeliner. Overcorrecting on the other eye left a barely discernable fine line. Then they both got washed off. Even my minimalist routine of foundation and mascara made me feel garish and self-conscious. I imagined people hiding their stunned reactions.

Bored? Look around the bedroom bookcase. Oh yeah, I forgot about that carved little box. I think I got it at a street fair in Santa Barbara the summer I graduated high school. My first road trip without a parent, it spawned a lifelong habit. Solo road trips cured my craving for that feeling of flight – like an explorer from ancient eras. Santa Barbara was still a small lazy beach city then.

You found the gifts of jewelry I was given: a broad silver band bracelette, a birthday gift from my best girlfriend; the gold chain necklace – one of the first gifts Art gave me. That narrow silver ring with little diamonds is Mom’s wedding ring. She gave it to me long before I got married, when she could no longer slide it over her knuckles. My knuckles got too big, too, many years ago.

Oh, the lavaliere necklace that I stole back from my niece. It is an heirloom given to my grandmother by her mother, to my mother by her mother, and then to me. It passed down to each of us on our eleventh birthdays. Mom explained that it went to second daughters. In my case, it would go to my sister’s daughter. When the designated birthday approached, I dutifully prepared a letter relating the story, had the necklace cleaned, and grudgingly sent it to my niece. The designated niece was a brat. I knew she would not care the least bit about its history, much less take responsibility for continuing the tradition. Her older sister was much more worthy, but ineligible due to circumstances of birth. After my niece’s birthday, Mom confessed that the true story of the necklace was that it should go to the middle child, thereby making the worthy niece the rightful heir. She said she had told me “the second daughter” version when I was eleven because she thought I might think there was something wrong with being a middle child that warranted some special compensation. Crap!

My sister discovered the necklace on a pile of junk in a drawer in her daughter’s room while packing to move after divorcing her husband. My sister took it, and told me about it. Her ex-husband bought the votes of their children to live with him, and they had already moved out. She told me she wouldn’t tell her daughter she had it. Six years later my sister was dead. Her now grown children told me to take anything I wanted from her house. The necklace and a few favorite photos were all I took. I told them I took the photos. I didn’t tell them I took the necklace. Now what will happen to it? I better send my mother a sign.

That broken child’s ring with a painted metal goat on it had a complementary charm bracelette with a lamb, a duckling, a chicken, and a pony on it. I kept the ring because I found it odd that someone would design a ring with a billy goat on it, and because I found it touching that when I was a child, someone in my family thought of me when they saw it, and bought it for me.

Busted. A tiny butterfly carved of faux ivory with an equally tiny spoon at the end. A remnant of my college days, where I learned the value of having a close friend with an uncut source. The only narcotic I liked – a lot. Better move on.

Don’t open those! My journals. God, my grandmother was barely buried when my mother told me she’d found her journals and started reading them. It took me years to be able to write freely in my journals again. I always meant to put a note on their covers, “Do not open until at least ten years after my death.” The absence of that note appears to be a default invitation, “Read me now”. If you read them now, you will likely learn things that you did not know. If you read them now, you risk being disappointed, hurt, or offended by what you don’t know. If you read them now, the differences between the person you knew and the person you read will seem huge. You miss the person you knew. That is the person you want to spend time with again. If you wait, one day you can spend time with the person you miss. If you wait, you will think everything in my journals sounds just like me.