It's the last trip to Ethel's house. The funeral has come and gone. It was all very lovely,very proper. She was buried in her wedding suit. Not, the dress, that was to go to a design school, but her going away suit. The one she wore on the carriage ride to the train and off on her honeymoon. She looked like a queen in soft grey silk.
I'm returning the basket of ladies things and the key to the solicitor. I feel sad and lost, even though I only knew her for a short time, I felt like I had lost a life long friend.
The hippies are outside, tending their goats and vegetable garden. They are actually really nice people, not scary like Ethel thought. Lara's going to teach me weaving. They have their own world, just as Ethel had hers, and I have mine.
I let myself in, walk through the quiet rooms, putting Ethel's belongings back in their proper place. The house is silent and still, the grandfather clock the only sound as I prepare the tea in the dim kitchen and wait.
The solicitor is old, not as old as Ethel, but definitely of another era.
I pour the tea and set out biscuits. Every thing in it's place.
"You are a bridge, Poppi, a transition from the old to the new. A modern girl with old fashioned sense. That's what she liked about you."
"I'm just a kid, I'm not anything special"
"You reminded Ethel, of her daughter and herself when she was young. You made her last months interesting" he replied.
"She was the interesting one, she'd been through so much life, seen so much happen. She really did scare the nurses! I thought she was like a queen ordering her ladies about! Like Elizabeth I."
"She was very old, alone and scared, you helped her be brave in a world she didn't understand any more. Ethel wanted you to have this," he said handing me a small velvet box," and she left me a list of things for you to keep for your hope chest, I'll get them for you."
The box held a pair of earrings, single pearls, and a tiny note, "For your wedding day." The handwriting was not Ethel's. It must have been from her mother. I closed the box quickly, afraid that looking at those earrings would some how cause them to disintergrate.
He came back with a hat box I recognized from the front hall closet and a smaller square box and placed them on the table.
"She wanted you to have the teacups from the hospital as well. Don't open the boxes until you get home. She said to tell you it's a secret for your hope chest, all packed securely."
He helped me secure the precious boxes to the basket. I rode home slowly, wondering what could be in them?
I carry the boxes to my room and set them on the floor in front of my hope chest. It's not a real one like Ethel's, all carved and fancy with her initials on the front. It's just a cheap trunk covered with fake wicker I bought at a beach shop. In a way, it is like Ethel's, she encouraged me to start it and fill it with special things. Things that are to be put aside for when I have my own home to run properly.
There are two cards on the boxes. I open one, it is heavy, thick old fashioned paper with roses embossed in a circle around her initials. There is her stronger, younger handwriting, are the words.
"For your wedding day."
The boxes are glued shut. I put the card back in the envelope, carefully place the boxes in the hope chest and lock it. I won't peek, not matter how curious I am, I can't peek! It would show lack of restraint, impatience. I have to be patient, but I'M ONLY 14! It's a present, but it's not my wedding day.
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Comments
Rated.
You got some real treasures indeed here.
While most people who are trying to find answers, solutions and ways for a more desirable future by simply ‘barking up the wrong trees’ of changing political representatives and leaders, with some who try changing their religious organization membership, and various other contemporary ‘same old same old’ ways; as Albert Einstein is quoted as having said: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different results.”
As expressed in the scientific principle of Occam’s Razor: “The simplest explanation or strategy tends to be the best one.”
The simplest answers and solutions for a more desirable future for individuals and the human species is for more of us to follow the examples of YOU, Ethel, and others of the like, throughout all times. In other words, simply do the best that we can individually with our priority choices and ways, although being in a minority of, maybe, 1% of the population – rather than the Pop/Popular majority who, mostly, ‘believe’ that the one’s who “dies with the most toys win.”
The truth of the matter is just the opposite: The one’s who “dies with the most toys” losses, as they are most likely to leave this life filled with regrets related to having to leave all of their accumulated toys, which most of their time was spent accumulating. Rather than leaving here with the peace of mind of Ethel, and the like, leaving this human incarnation satisfied with just their “going away suit,” on into, maybe, etheric bodies and shrouds with no pockets, having spent most of personal time courageously, and truly heroically, maintaining and sustaining our best efforts with personal integrity, above and beyond, often, being “alone and scared.”
With the most valuable, and only things that we take with us out of this life being memories of what we learned and did with the time we spent here. We certainly need to do our best to insure that those memories we leave here with are, mostly, not regrets about any choices, decisions and actions, whether or not our essential Soul self, with conscious awareness, continues on to other dimensions – at least, we leave peacefully, as personified by Ethel.
Now that YOU have increasing numbers of us, readers, enthralled with this excellent blog series, on Ethel’s life legacy passed on to and through YOU, with the added intriguing element of literary mystery: What was in those “glued shut” boxes that Ethel left YOU when YOU were 14 years old? YOU must have, at least peeped in them by now, or opened them on yo wedding day, haven’t cha - huh?