In A Corner of the Attic

In A Corner of the Attic

With Mom’s health becoming more fragile by the day, I knew it was time to begin the trugedy to cleaning our her attic.

Mom was almost completely blinded with macular degeration and I always feard she’d miss a step and tumble down, only to hit her head on the old wooden steps. Mom also showed sign of the beginning of dementia. It was only a matter of time before her mind would slip away.

One week at a time, we cleaned, polished, and empited what we could until it time for her to leave her home and move in with us. She wasn’t happy but she had no choice. While she didn’t fall down the attic steps, she’d bounced on every step leading to the second floor. While she was in the hospital, we washed the steps, the banister, and the wall where her blood splattered with the skin on the back of her head split.

While she recovered, we, more vigouriously went throught her things and resume paking.

One day, after we brought mom home from the hospital, I pulled out her old photograph albums and started asking about the people in the picutres. Yes, mom could barely see them but at least she marked them with first names.

“Mom, who’s Vera?”

“Is she one of your friends that I met recently?”

Oops! Not good.

Through the years, I’d only had the opportunity to meet one of her dearest friends. The rest in the album, I didn’t know. Yes, I recognized the names but still didn’t know a thing about them.

“Mom, who’s Ziggy?”

She’d give me a blank stare.

Week by week, month by month, I’d try to prompt mom’s memory and week by week, month by month, whatever I tried didn’t work.

That’s what prompted this poem. I call it “In a Corner of the Attic”.

Too often we’ve forgetten names

Of people we had known.

Those who had been close to us, as,

Through the years we’d grown.

Memory often fails us

As our hair begins to gray;

Photographs have cracked with age

While names have slipped away.

In a corner of mom’s attic

Were some books of photographs.

Many were us children

And brought us many laughs.

But as those pictures showed us age,

A tear soon filled my eye.

I remembered all our heartaches,

Ad silently wondered why.

I sighed and picked another book

And saw it was quite old.

I thought about its stories

Awaiting to be told.

Many of those photographs

Were yello-streaked with age,

And carefully positioned

On a faded page.

I asked mom who those people were

She knew so long ago.

The years have quickly slipped away

And now, she didin’t know.

Some friends wed and moved away

Others died in war.

People seemed too busy

For friendships anymore.

And so the friends of long ago

Are thoughts just in mom’s mind.

Another plce, another face,

Lost somewhere now in time.

I gently put her albums back

On her old, forgotten shelf.

The way she kept her pictures

Made me think about myself.

My pictures too were hardly marked

With a name, a date, or place.

I knew as I got older,

My mind time might erase.

So, I gathered all the boxes

Where all my pictures lay

And promised I’d find albums

To put them in - someday.

I started writing on the backs

The who’s, when’s where’s, and why’s

Jotted down the laughter,

Nothing all the cries.

So when my children ask me

If old friends I can recall,

I’ll show them many boxes.

“Yes, I know them all.”

It’s a lesson that I’ve learned from mom

That’s I’ve taken to my heart.

To leave my legacy behind

I’ve found a place to start.

In future generations

When they trace my famiy’s tree,

They can search my many albums

And recall each memory.