Husband and I just returned from Florida where we spent the last several days. It wasn’t a vacation, though. Husband’s mom passed away. I wrote about my adorable mother-in-law in this entry right here and about how she always wanted her belongings to find the proper home so they would continue to be enjoyed. In the beginning it weirded me out; then I came to think of it as quirky and endearing. In the end, it was sadder, sweeter, and more poignant than I could ever have imagined.
My in-laws were married over 60 years and they were that couple who finished each other’s sentences seamlessly. They were so in tune and so comfortable together they could make snide but knowing remarks in front of each other that were right on target. When I first met them nine years ago, they had already been living in south Florida for over a decade having relocated from a tony New York suburb. I asked my mother-in-law how they came to choose that particular area for retirement.
She replied, “Your father-in-law really wanted to move to Florida. I told him I wanted to live anywhere else. So we compromised. We moved to Florida.” At that point she gestured around at all the palm trees and drug stores while my father-in-law dismissed her complaint with a wave saying, “Oh, you haven’t done so bad.”
My in-laws and I hit it off immediately. Husband had been widowed for over a decade when we met, and his mom hugged me at our wedding and whispered in my ear, “Now I can see what he was waiting for.” Husband has a sister and a married brother who arrived with his wife, so there were three of us women gathered in my mother-in-law’s walk-in closet down in their apartment after we returned from temple. My father-in-law had requested that everything in the closet be dispersed before we left.
Now I have to tell you that Husband’s mother was a fashionista. She died in her mid-eighties and we found receipts for custom-made jewelry dated a year ago. We found the custom-made jewelry, too. In her salad days, she was a sales associate at one of New York’s top-tier retail stores for over two decades and she treasured her employee discount. I am willing to wager that no one on the planet put it to better use.
Inside that closet, packed on every shelf and every inch of floor space, was the classy and sophisticated evidence of a life well-clothed, well-lived, and certainly always noticed. Louis Vuitton, Balenciaga, Fendi, Coach, Tiffany – they were all there. Suddenly, I appreciated the luxury she had infused into her daily life, and the haven it afforded her amidst whatever else was going on.
Over the next two days, my sisters-in-law and I sorted and divided and boxed whatever was left for charity. In alternating turns, the process was sad, frantic, overwhelming, giddy, and strangely cathartic. At one point, we thought we had dropped one of her Tiffany earrings on the carpet and we were all on the floor searching. Then Husband’s sister said, “You know, Mom is probably looking down at us laughing because we’re trying to find an earring she knows she lost ten years ago.”
The men were all in the other room the whole time talking about cars or work or stocks or whatever it is guys talk about, who knows. What I do know is that there were four women together in a closet that weekend, laughing and crying, and one of them was watching.
Daughter’s Fotos fittingly evoke Elegant Whimsy
Quintuplets in Queue by Yuko Shimizu
Prince of Plush Panda by Yuko Shimizu
Believe the Type Exhibition
Land of A
Believe the Type
An Exhibition Exploring the Art of Typography @ Ogilvy & Mather
best. shoes. ever.