Arbitrary Reflections....on a Friday

When my mother died I was tasked with cleaning out her house and getting it ready for sale. I wasn’t much surprised by anything I found until I went down into the basement. There, behind the stairs in a dark corner was a cobbled together set of shelves. Made from leftover wood, two by fours and bits of plywood. Not pretty but sturdy and functional. And on these narrow shelves were jars and jars of my grandmother’s canning. Vegetables from her victory garden that she had 'put up' years ago. Some of them were pristine and recognizable and some were black with spoilage.

It hit me like a ton of bricks. My grandmother had died many years before, in a different town hundreds of miles away from this dark basement. And yet my mother had rescued the jars and kept them all these years. I had been in and out of this basement many times but somehow I had never noticed them.

In that moment of fresh grief for my mother’s passing I felt a connection to her that I hadn’t felt before. She missed her mother as much as I was missing her. It was as if she had placed those jars there for me, just for this moment when she knew I would need them. As if to say, “I know. I know how you’re feeling and here is tangible proof that I understand.” A cosmic ‘hug’ if you will from my female ancestors who knew exactly when and where I would need it.