It’s Mine Now and I Don’t Even Need It

Yesterday I wrote about the passing of my Grandmother and the money I found in her garage refrigerator.  I’ve always wondered why it came to be that she had more than $4,000 in her refrigerator.  Here I make an effort at finding her perspective, though not her voice, based on my limited information, to tell the story through her fictional point of view. —

“J’s gone, ” I said to each of my Grandkids over the phone.  3 weeks earlier I’d lost my only son.  Now my daughter was gone too.

I had to do so many things.

The grandkids didn’t want me to be alone, but couldn’t yet come.  They called some extended family and they came.  I didn’t want them here.  I didn’t want any of this.

Family came and went for the funeral, the second that month.  We had just done this.  This. It took my breath away.

Settle the estates, file the paperwork.  It’s what has to be done.

J’s desk was a medicine cabinet of pills and ink pens and nail clippers.  A carton of cigarettes, half empty.  Inside her top drawer were the envelopes, left over from paying bills and reused for saving.  She’d kept money from substitute teaching jobs or the sale of an item at a yard sale or…whatever.  This money had a purpose.  Each envelope had a label “For a gift for mother.” “To buy a new blouse.” “Toys for Tim’s at Christmas.”  $50, $25, $100. “Rebate money from Duracell,” $5.  Four Thousand Eight Hundred Eighteen Dollars.  $4,818.

It’s mine now and I don’t even need it.  Maybe I’ll put it away.  Buy myself a gift.  Buy toys at Christmas for the great grands like J wanted.  Maybe.

I’ll put it in the filing cabinet now.  Move it to a shoe box later.  Pack it away.  When I move into my new house, I’ll bring it separately from the help I have to move.  It’s nobody’s business.  It’s mine now, and I don’t even need it.  I’ll put it in a box in the fridge and forget about it.  I don’t even want it.  It’s a memory of things left undone.