A Postcard from Heaven hi

I told them I didn’t want anything, but the truth was, I wished I could take every single item and stow it in my basement until they came back. The problem was, they weren’t coming back. Not ever. So then I wished I could take Marjorie and Keith’s furniture and dishes, bedding and glassware and store it away until either Stephen or Elisabeth were grown up enough to realize that those items were needed, maybe even valued. But I had nowhere to put them. 

 

Losing a best friend is tough. Losing two is even tougher. When Keith died only 6 months after his bride passed away, all I could think of were the children, aged 19 and 21. Then I heard the news: the Crabtree household’s contents were being auctioned. The children, so bereaved, wanted nothing. I wanted everything: the Persian carpet with worn places where Marjorie knelt to pray; the blue and yellow curtains Marjorie handmade for her kitchen; the blue couch she lay on that last year when the cancer had metastasized to her spinal column; the photos off the walls, especially of their June wedding 26 years ago; the dishes she ate from and the clothing she wore. But common sense and space dictated the truth. Plus it wasn’t the things I wanted: it was my friends back.

 

Out of the blue, one of her Columbus friends called me. Would I like to come to the  auction? I couldn’t bear seeing Marjorie’s white rattan chairs that she painted sold for pennies on the dollar, her dishes she brought back from Korea being taken away by strangers. Did I wish to buy anything, her friend asked? Yes, I answered, her picture postcard album.

 

I still remember the day Marjorie and I spent perusing that album. It belonged to Marjorie’s great aunt Jean and contained scores of darling postcards, all charmingly written in the early 1900’s. 

 

Marjorie was a big letter writer. She bought stamps like other people buy bread and milk. She sent letters to her parents, to me, to my daughter, to friends across the country and beyond. Her pen was never idle. Neither was Aunt Jean’s from what I could see from her correspondence.

 

A few weeks after that phone call about the auction, I invited Stephen out to dinner when I was in Columbus. We reminisced about his mom. That she’d never earned a B in her life. That Keith was the only man she ever loved.  That she was always up for an adventure.

 

And then he gave me the bag from his car with the green album full of postcards. And for my dear friends, I wept once more.