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 electronically saved people are deleted?
Address Books and Match 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 