The Little Black Book

I just saw her yesterday. How can she be GONE, if I just saw her yesterday?! This had to be a joke; an uncouth prank, but it just couldn’t be true.

She’d had pneumonia since Christmas – but people get stuff like that all the time. Pneumonia, bronchitis, the flu, no one lives their entire life without experiencing ONE of those ailments at some point. And ALL are completely and totally curable; the nurses said she was recovering well, she just needed to regain some strength. Though it seems the rehab was all for naught since now she’s just … gone. Just like THAT. Gone.

It was as simple as a seizure. That’s what took her from us; no rhyme, no reason.

Dad was handling it as best he could. He’s a retired military man, so when there’s a job to be done he’s ON IT and it GETS done. But this was … different. This was his wife. His one and only love of almost 50 years. The resulting fog of the situation began to consume him, trumping his military can-do instincts. As the oldest of six kids, I did what you do when you’re the eldest: I stepped in. The funeral arrangements, the obituary, the flowers, the cemetery; mom’s death was completely out of the blue, so nothing had been pre-planned. Dad was going to need all the help he could get, and I was going to make sure he got it.

Mom was all about “the numbers”. Everything had to be “even”. Our last name has 10 letters; each of the kids have first & middle names that have an even number of letters (and yes, she planned it that way, she would frequently remind us). When she surprisingly got pregnant the last time—it was number five, an ODD number?!—she was a little disheartened. Until she found out she was pregnant with twins; then all was “right” again. Five pregnancies, but SIX kids! Because it was, after all, always about the numbers.

So the six of us kids gathered around the kitchen table to go through boxes of photo albums & loose photographs that had been taken over the past 66 years of her life. We had to pick the “best” ones for the funeral viewing. It felt odd trying to sum up a lifetime with a measly hundred pictures. As we got down to one of the last boxes, there was something odd at the bottom … it wasn’t a photograph, what was it? It looked like a small box. When I retrieved the mystery “box”, I saw it was actually a little black book.

Uh-oh. Had we accidentally stumbled into a secret stash of mom’s old boyfriends?! None of us wanted to look … so of course, I looked. And when I realized what the contents of this little black book WERE – I began to laugh. I had been crying for the past 2 days straight and this felt foreign, almost wrong … but it also felt RIGHT. And after seeing the shocked look on my siblings faces, I realized I needed to explain my outburst.

This little book wasn’t a list of names & phone numbers of old boyfriends that pre-dated her meeting our father. It was a list of all of US. Her family. Important dates of when major events happened in all of our lives: my sister breaking her arm, my brother’s hernia surgery, the car accident my other sister was in, my other brother’s wedding, the date, exact time & birthweight of EACH of us, the names of ALL our pets along with the dates we got them & later lost them … it was a hand-written timeline she had kept of her family.

Oh there were names & address of extended family members also; but even when someone moved, she never erased or whited-out the old info. She simply drew a line through it with—you guessed it—the DATE that it changed; because it was always about the numbers. SHE was always about the numbers.

And then, on the very last page, was a string of numbers that didn’t make sense in any context, but there was a phone number, with a single name next to it: “Charlie”. None of us, including dad, knew of anyone by this name. But mom had written it down in this little black book of everyone & everything that had ever meant anything to her, so it was obviously important. We’d already called all her friends & our out-of-town family … seems this would be the last call to make. And we were ALL scared to volunteer making it; so guess who DID.

When I called the number, I was surprised that a woman answered right away with a cheery “Hello, Charlie here!”. I took a deep breath & explained who I was, that my mother had passed & how we had found this name & phone number in her personal effects. After extending her sincere condolences, Charlie now explained who SHE was: it seems my mother had set up a bank account some years back & kept adding to it, a little a time—whenever she could—and that she had named her eldest child as the POD (payable on death) beneficiary. Charlie offered that after the funeral, she could meet with me to go over the details of closing out the account.

Her services were beautiful; SO many people showed up, I hadn’t realized how many lives my mom had touched?! The pastor knew our family, so he was able to add personal touches which sometimes even gleaned smiles & laughter amidst the sniffles & tears. We chose a cemetery that happened to be located just a mile or two away from where my parents lived, so dad could still visit her whenever he wanted.

Charlie attended the funeral, and surprisingly knew all of us instantly, without introduction?! Apparently, mom always had pictures in her purse & would show them off to Charlie whenever she made a deposit. After a few swapped stories, I made an appointment to meet with her at the bank the following Monday.

With a certified copy of my mother’s death certificate in hand, Charlie greeted me at the door & ushered me into her office. The paperwork happened so fast it was almost a blur when she asked if I wanted to close out the account with a Certified check. I nodded affirmatively & within a few more minutes I left the back with an envelope, check inside.

The rest of my family were back at the house, reminiscing & organizing mom’s earthly belongings. My return was a welcome excuse for them to break for lunch. After eating, I took the envelope out & opened it with all my siblings & our father: the check inside was made out for exactly twenty thousand dollars. Dad was still in shock, he’d had NO IDEA mom had been—in his words—"squirreling away” any money?! He laughed and wondered aloud if it was a coincidence that the amount was for an “even” number.

My siblings all began to ask with excitement how I was going to spend the stipend mom had left to me … without hesitation, I replied the only answer I knew: I was going to split it. Each of us six kids would take $2,500 and dad would have the remaining $5,000. An EVEN split. Because after all, it’s all about the numbers …