Have you ever gone through the belongings of your loved ones after they’re gone?
In 2002, I found in my mother’s bureau, every Mother’s Day card she had received from her children. Included were hand-written letters of thanks sent by her physician. These letters told me my mother had regularly dropped off orchids and papayas from the farm where she worked. I sent these letters back to the doctor and he was totally moved that my mother had saved each one. She lost to Alzheimer’s but I found her stories in her belongings.
Allow me to share a poem I wrote after observing two people exchange phone numbers. They deftly added numbers to their smart phones. What will we have after electronic devices are deleted? I apologize for Blog not printing my poems with stanzas.
Address Books and Match Book Covers
When I am dead, my dearest,
Will you draw a Sharpie marker
Through my name, write Dead in bold caps
Or simply press Delete
To eradicate me forever?
Or will you preserve my name under K
And years from now…
On a cold wintry afternoon when friends
Have deserted you and boredom sets in,
You flip through your address book and pause at K .
Under the slow – changing day into night, my name appears.
You say my name and soon stories appear and you smile and even chuckle
When there was a me and a you.
Perhaps memories will take you to a shoe box labeled FHK
In a spider-webbed corner of the garage.
You find old faded match covers. Match covers?
Yes, match covers. You flip one open and see faded numbers.
Is it a hurriedly written phone number of a handsome stranger I once met
In a coffee shop or in a bar? Did I call that number and did a story begin?
Should you play sleuth and call that number? He must be long gone by now.
Are there match covers in other garages?
A shoe box of mysteries keep you awake until dawn.
Ah ha…and you thought I was gone forever.
©frances h kakugawa
Frances Kakugawa's Blog 
Frances — I not only have have my old address books, with dates of death written in, but my mother’s and my grandmother’s address books, too. I cannot find it in myself to get rid of any of them. They track our lives. Oh, yes, and a Rolodex. I don’t use it, but I have it. No matchbooks, though. You are more adventuresome than I!
Genie, I date myself with matchbook covers. My friend Charles Pellegrino even keeps emails of friends long gone. Once he emailed to one and was shocked when he got a response, it was from the dead friend’s family. That was funny.