Email

I'm back at home again. I've shipped about 7 large boxes of the family relics to my house and they are starting to dribble in. I have no idea where I'm going to put the stuff. My brother and his wife had no interest, so I am the defacto keeper of the family archives. Nothing much of any monetary value except possibly the two double string of pearls I found in an aunt's jewelry box--the aunt who passed away the year before Mom. I have my grandmother's Kitchen Aid mixer which is at least 60 years old and looks it. She made thousands of really good loaves of bread with that mixer. Maybe I will too.

At work there has been an initiative to clean up and reduce the size of our email boxes. My inbox contains hundreds of email letters from my mother from over just the last couple of years. I bought her her first computer 11 years ago just after she had her cancerous larynx removed. I thought it would help her feel connected especially before she got her voice prosthetic. Little did I realize how much our email letters would become such a part of my life. Our letters were very chatty, full of shared interests about plants and cooking, family moments, little things mostly. Not a day goes by that I don't see something or something will happen that I want to tell Mom about. But there won't be anymore email. I miss that the most.