Amounting To

I guess she wasn’t old enough to be thinking about a will. 46 isn’t knocking on death’s door. 46 is dreading your 50th birthday, it’s a mid-life crisis. Dying at 46 means that at age 23, she was halfway through her life. I’ll be 23 in March.

The state declared it was all mine. The small, artistic, mess of a house that I grew up in as well as all of my mother’s savings was officially, legally mine. I had never worked for these things, yet I am now a homeowner with no one to ask about insurance, or what to do when the basement floods again, or how to cope when your mother dies when you’re only 22.

I had been living in New York when I got the call, two months short of graduating with a bachelor’s degree. College has been a safety net surrounding my dive into adulthood. I know it’s supposed to mean I’m independent, but I didn’t think I really had to be until I was done with it. I figured, if I’m still in school, I’m still a kid. I expected to get a reality slap when it was over and my debt was due, but I didn’t expect it to feel so utterly meaningless in the grand scheme of things. I owe $60,000, but my mother is dead. I owe $60,000, and my mother is dead. $60,000 is nothing because my mother is dead.

My mom managed to have a savings account with about $20,000 in it. I felt guilty about being shocked. It never looked like she had money. There was always something to be fixed around the house and she put a lot of effort into being resourceful. If the chair broke, she reupholstered it. If a grocery trip was in order, she made a meal using everything left in the pantry. If it could save money, she found a way. So, when the judge declared I was now $20,000 richer, I sank with a weight of emotions that overly confused me.

What am I supposed to do with that?

My mother was an artist. She kept flowers long past their lifespan and only had three cooking pans. She liked those three and couldn’t see a reason for needing another. She loved that it meant less dishes to clean. However, being a conservative pan owner let her hoarding tendencies flourish in other divisions. She had every type of paper one could imagine. If I needed to make something, it could be made. If I was wondering about a certain toy I had as a child, it was likely still in the basement among all of the memorabilia from the start of her life, to the present of mine. It’s all still in the basement. Yet now, it’s my responsibility to go and find it, decide if I’d like to keep it, and do what I will from there.

All I know is that I don’t want this.

I am 22. I now have a bachelor’s degree in graphic design – a computerized version of my mother’s craft – and I don’t know where to go from here. I was renting an apartment with three other roommates. I’m still paying rent, but I now stand in my small hometown and can’t imagine how I’ve maintained a whole life elsewhere as the tan bricks on my childhood home remain here, sitting, housing nothing but our cat – my cat – that we bottle-fed as a kitten. Spring doesn’t know what happened. She purrs when I greet her. I wish I could be her.

I fall to the floor and cry. This is expected. I’ve already cried my face raw and I know that I’ll continue to for quite some time, and then I will unexpectedly for the rest of my life. When I meet new people and we’re telling each other about ourselves, I’ll now have to say, “My mother died when I was 22.” And when they give me their condolences and then ask about my father, I will say, “My parents divorced when I was really little, and he was never in the picture.” They’ll surely apologize again. I don’t want to have such a sad story. I don’t want to have a dead mother. I don’t want to have this house, the basement full of sad memories, the empty bedroom full of things I’ve never seen of hers, this new money. What am I supposed to do with that? $20,000 is nothing. A consolation prize and a sick joke. I would trade it in a second. I would trade anything. What would I do? I would go back. I would never be born.

She wouldn’t want that.

What would she want? I could pay a third of my debt, but I looked it up, and I couldn’t even purchase the model of car that killed my mother with $20,000.

I guess that’s a reality that isn’t worth the battle of understanding – where an appropriate response would have to be “it is what it is.”

What a stupid saying.

I’m sure she’s happy I have it. I guess I’m happy to have it. I know that I am. I’m grateful to inherit her life; I just wish it didn’t amount to objects and a dollar sign, but I suppose it only does if I choose to think artificially.

I stop crying. Spring leads me to her food bowl, expecting dinner. I feed and pet her as I collect myself, trying to channel her oblivion. My mother was the most amazing woman I’ve ever known, and she will go down in history as such.

After a period of undetermined time, I find myself in her bedroom. After getting over the initial eeriness of the still objects resting with signs of having just been used, I find myself in her closet, looking through a decorative box she had kept on a tall shelf. I find a little black book. The pages are filled with writing. They are dated to indicate she was in her late 20s. Her handwriting is the same.

I smile to myself reading about her days. I flip through the pages and a small Polaroid falls on my lap. My mother smiles back at me. She’s in her under garments, sitting on the floor, and laughing. I’m not sure who took the photo, but I can tell they were both experiencing youth in a blissful moment. My mother had a whole life – cutting it short didn’t diminish its quality or leave things unfinished. My mother made a living as an artist and grew up to pass that tradition to me. She taught me everything she could think to teach me and confidently set me on my way. I will not waste what she’s given me and won’t take it for granted. I will read more about her days and retell them to the new people I meet. I will show them this book and say “This is my mother. She gave me everything, and it was beautiful.”