Envelopes

The stack of envelopes never seemed to end. Why on earth my folks hadn’t gone through the mail for what looked like years was beyond me. There was so much. Now I knew why Mom always kept the office door closed and why she never let any of us go in there.

She was likely embarrassed. The office was crammed full—boxes of cords for devices, bags from the hobby store, bookcases crammed with tons of cookbooks, crafting books, and the never-ending stack of mail I’d decided to tackle on this beautiful Saturday morning when I should be watching my son practice.

I couldn’t just chuck it all into the trash can either. There were documents, cash, and important information hidden in the stacks. I’d learned that when I was cleaning out other areas of the house. Gift cards mixed in with old magazines, cash tucked into books, pounds of change in jars at the back of the cupboard. Money still in greeting cards. I’d already found a check that hadn’t been cashed and a birthday card with a fifty-dollar bill inside in the first four envelopes today.

It was exhausting.

The house was almost done. The office was the final room in the four-bedroom, three-and-a half-bath house. Each room was empty now except for this one. My siblings and I had spent almost a year on this clean-up. Every weekend was spent sleeping on air mattresses and cleaning out multiple closets and drawers. It had been an incredible bonding experience for us, but one we should never have had to endure.

This past year had been brutal. Mom died first. The cancer had seemed to come out of nowhere though I’d wondered if she had symptoms she’d either ignored or hidden from everyone. Once she was diagnosed the cancer took her within weeks.

It had been hell. My siblings and I had a rotating schedule to care for Mom and to make sure Dad was okay, so one of us stayed over every night of the week, and usually we were all there over the weekend. Mom had passed on Tuesday morning.

Dad was killed the following Thursday. Ten days after Mom died.

I’d been in a meeting. One of those boring boardroom fiascos with pastries, bad coffee, and too many opinions flying around. It had been my first day in the office after Mom’s funeral, and I was struggling to get back into the swing of office life. The receptionist stuck her head in the door and called my name with an emergency phone call.

My first thought was about the kids or my husband. I definitely wasn’t prepared for the state trooper telling me my father was involved in an accident and had been transported to Mercy General in critical condition.

He died before I arrived.

The tractor trailer had crossed the median and hit him head on. The driver had been under the influence of drugs and had no idea he’d murdered my father. My father, who was just trying to figure out how to live now that his soulmate was gone. My father, who’d been going somewhere none of us could figure out that day.

To say the family was devastated would have been an understatement. The funeral director treated us with kid gloves as we yet again navigated a funeral service.

For me, the bottom had dropped out of my world.

Oh, I functioned. I took care of my kids and supported them through the grief of losing both grandparents. My husband supported all of us—doing everything he could to make life easier. All I could remember was the hollow feeling. The grief that hit me when I least expected it, and I found I could only function if I was pretending everything was okay. Nothing was okay.

My siblings and I started cleaning out the house the Saturday after Dad’s funeral. We thought it would be easy and had the ridiculous notion it wouldn’t take more than a few weekends. Boy, were we wrong. Despite the fact we all saw our parents at least weekly, none of us had a clue about the insane hoard we were getting into.

The main living spaces were always immaculate and clutter-free, but what lay beyond the closed doors of our childhood home shocked us. My old bedroom was stacked floor to ceiling with boxes. Empty boxes. No, I didn’t know why. The room they kept as a guest room looked easy at first glance, but we found the closet and under the bed crammed with magazines, cookbooks, and craft supplies.

We systematically sorted, donated, sold, and worked our way through each room, purposefully leaving the office (which was my younger sister’s childhood bedroom) for last. Part of me wished we had tackled it first, but I couldn’t change that now.

I picked up a decorative storage box, expecting the typical junk you stored in things like that. What I got was greeting cards they’d given to each other over the years. Choking on a sob, I opened envelope after envelope, reading their love in the prose and handwritten notes. I didn’t have to go through every envelope in this box. There wouldn’t be cash or gift cards here. My parents didn’t give each other those things as gifts. But I couldn’t seem to stop myself.

As I got to the bottom of the box, I found some comfort even though I couldn’t seem to stop the tears. My parents had loved each other so much and that love had extended to us. We had a wonderful childhood and our relationship with our parents grew into adulthood.

The only regret I had was that they weren’t here anymore.

I took a few minutes to compose myself and text our sibling group chat to ask what they wanted to do with the box of cards. My sister wanted to keep them and my brother said to toss them. I returned each envelope to the box and closed the lid before taking it to the dining room.

We’d all lost our sense of sentimentality while doing this clean-up. Things were things and while a lot of items held special memories for us, we only kept the very favorites. To say our folks had a lot of stuff would have been a gross understatement, and the very thought made me laugh—one of those cynical, hard laughs. Part of me wished I had realized how packed the house was ages ago, but what could I have done about it? They clearly didn’t want us to know and would have fought us on any attempt to unburden the load.

But if my sister wanted this box, then she could take it. Different things meant something to each of us.

After drying my tears and drinking some water, I went back to the office.

I already had two garbage cans full of the office contents, and I felt like I still hadn’t made a dent. The books had been boxed up and placed in the garage with the crafting items for my siblings to sort through and then be donated. The massive stack of mail had seemed to grow while I was boxing up the books.

I won’t lie. I was a little resentful this task had been left to us kids. Angry, really. The stuff. The paperwork. The lost time with my own family and friends. None of us should have had to deal with this. And there was no other option. I kept reminding myself the job would be done soon, and then I would have to face a different grief.

This time spent with my siblings had been really good. We laughed together, cried together, made decisions, cooked meals, and supported each other. Honestly, I felt like I was living two different lives. My normal life during the week and a completely different life on the weekends.

Part of me couldn’t wait to get back to whatever my new normal was going to be without my parents and the other part of me kind of wanted this clean-up to last a lot longer just to keep the connection with my siblings. It was easy to be around people who had suffered the same exact loss. They didn’t ask you how you were doing because they already knew the answer. They didn’t say your parents were in a better place because they knew those words were said by people who didn’t know what to say.

By the time my alarm to remind me to pick up my son went off, I could see the progress. I had filled four boxes of unopened mail to take home to sort and had filled the same amount for my siblings to pick up and go through. There was no mail left on the sagging desk now, and for some reason, that made me sadder than going through my parents’ love notes.

This was it. Once we were done with this room, we were done here. The house would be sold, and a new family would move in. Our connection to this home would end.

But the things we learned about our parents, each other, and ourselves would go with us. Sixty years of memories and love wouldn’t end. We’d each take those with us and keep them close. We’d tell their stories and honor their traditions.

But mainly, we’d share the love they shared with us.