The Little Black Book

"Hello", I said.

"Mom is gone", My sister said in that voice I had only heard when I knew there was bad news left to share. She always had a knack for reaching me when I was most unprepared for the news that was hers alone to tell me.

My sistere was the last attachment I had with my family ever since our father passed more than six years ago. I could not bring myself to have an ongoing relationship with my so called mother despite the fact that the tension between us really had little to do with me at all.

I had for years attempted to reach out only to feel like I was a bother and maybe just maybe my caring would flip a switch and make her capable of giving even one iota of care for me and how I was doing.

Beyond the superficial pleasantries in those days when we did have a somewhat distant relationship, there was not a lot more of substance that would differentiate our relationship from that of one just meeting for the first time.

"I don't know what to do about the arrangments and there is all that crap in her basement." She said with a lot of hatred in her voice. "I can deal with that all don't worry." I said

After a few more details about what had transpired over the last few days I was off the phone and left to contemplate my new title, orphan. Then again I felt like that for many long months now and the finality of her leaving for the great beyond just gave the situation a sense of permanance.

Just a day after that call I found myself in the place I least wanted to be in the house I had last seen my mother and a community that held many bad memories for both me and my sister.

I had all the details to work out which, for most I had no idea, and in all cases no care either way. As a final indignity from the woman who was in name at least known as my mother she refused to once be caring and take care to leave behind any input as to what she wanted at her final passing.

To top that off I decided to stay in the home that held the memories of my childhood. A small bungalow with a finished basment which showed every year of it's age. The heat was lacking and the windows and doors all drafty and to top it off it was late into a colder than average fall.

Having made the drive many times before this one felt somehow more annoying as every unpaved hole seemed to rattle me to my core. I did not even know why I had quickly agreed to come and deal with the whole mess being that we had never been there in any way on the same page.

The funeral director did his best to be caring and suggested all the regular parts of the program to me in a matter of fact way. Did I want a pillow in the coffin, or were we interested in cremation and where was the final internment to be. None of this was easy as I was left with no knowledge of what the woman would want. My sister sat there with a sense of dread and no real effort to assist in making the decisions.

That behind me I was now back to the home and finding it was strangly not just one of unhappy feelings. I flashed on many happy memories growing up with my sister. Christmas, Easter, Summer Break and family get togethers with my parents. Some actually made me smile like the time we tried to cut a tree and got the wrong type for christmas. We used it anyway and it always made me laugh that we did not know the difference between the specis of evergreen trees.

I opened the door to the basment in a fog thinking I needed to see how large a colleciton of items which called the dungeon home. I went down the dark stairs and reached for the light switch and saw a single light bulb come to light at the base of the stairs.

There of course was a few random things on the stairs that led down to the nether region below and I was brought back to the last time I had a spat over how dangerous the storing of random tools on the top of the steps that were very awkward and unsafe to start with. The fact that my father had fallen down the very steps when he tripped on an adjustable wrench and hammer that was left there only brought back the anger I felt about his untimely death.

I always felt he somehow contributed to his own accidental death by not taking a more firm hand with her and insisting she not store things at the top of the stairs. I now know it was not him as she continued to put stuff there no matter how many people removed it from there admonishing her to not do it for safteys sake.

I did make it down and there in the start of the large room was a stool and on the stool was a box and written in red paint was my name. I had no clue what the box held but I knew instantly it was never there on any of the other trips I made to the basement.

I paused wondering what could be there and who left it for me and in the moment I thought of all the items that had come and gone in the years my pack rat mother had bought multiple items she neither needed or truly had a use for only to give them away to some needy person who happend to mention they were looking for something.

I was deep in thought wondering when my conscience brought me back to the present and I realized how stupid I was. If I wanted to know what was there within the box all I had to do was open it.

I reached out and threw back the top of the box and inside I saw a single black book with no label and no indication of what it contained. I grasped it and took it out and backed to the stpes and sat on the third one from the bottom. The light was best here with the bulb just above the bottom of the stairway.

When I cracked open the book I saw instantly what I recognized as my mother's handwriting. Starting at the first page and filling all the pages but the final three she had captured her thoughts and addressed them to me.

Why me? Why not my Sister?

What it was in those well filled pages was her history and her story and explanation of why she was the way she was. She had itemized her feelings in the only way she knew how. She had recounted her happy and sad experiences in vivid detail and she had even gone so far as to appologize for the wrong she had forced on her children.

When I got the the third from last page she turned her story to five months ago when she found out that she was expected to not survive for much longer. She wanted the last months to be a chance for here to make things right. She layed out the day she got the news from the doctor and her going to her bank to find out she had managed to squirlle away a tidy sum which included money that our father had left from a large insurance policy to her.

She had never spent a dime of it and had invested it in a mutual fund with me and my sister as her benificiary. All I had to do was take the last three pages of the book to the local investment advisors office and I would be provided the funds. The house and the funds were ours to do with as we wanted.

I thought to myself why would she arrange this when she always seemed to be so distant and ill prepared to be my mother. On the final page she answered the question. I was not her natural born child. Her plan was to be an actress and that had to be changed to allow here to marry her first husband when she was unexpectedly pregnant with my sister. Once she made the decision to mother she never went back to her first love.

Her final line of text said, "I will always regret not being the mother you wanted or needed and for that I am truly sorry. Know that I truly loved you but was not able to show it." It went on to explain that the man I called father was not her first love. That man left here when they were newleyweds. Shortly after my sister was born the man had sucumbed to the stress of fatherhood and dissapeared.

A few months later she met my father who was himself a widdower and left with a son who had been born on the night his true love died in childbirth. Both were seeking support and love and decided to raise both children together even though they were not the actual biological parent of the other persons child.

They had pledged to never tell the children they were not in fact related by blood and to only tell them the story afte the death of the last surviving parent. The money which was now being left was the result of a deep desire to make a final amends for not giving us the information before.

I was dumbfounded and decided to go to the office and find out what was required. When I arrived I was ushered into a small office and a portly older man came in and said he was sorry to hear about my loss and began to itemize the resulting funds and investments to me.

In all it added up to more than 5.2 million dollars which was to be shared between me and my sister with only one stipulation. I could never divulge the situation that led to our being raised as siblings.

My mother in her final act had caused me to be entrusted with one final secret I could never share. Of course I knew that the fact I was not actually blood related to my sister did not make our bond any less.

We were truly related now by a bond stronger than just birth or biology. We were by choice brother and sister.

With the stroke of a pen I was healed and understood so much more about what had led to our estrangment. I knew that with the finding of that book I had been given a gift larger than money. I was given the gift of being able to forgive.

The funeral was fitting with sun shining in that late fall afternoon and a service that was filled with love. I told my sister that I would try harder to see her more going forward and this time I knew I was going to follow through.