It was September 1997 and I was two weeks away from delivering our first child. It was nearly seven years to the day that we’d lost my mom to a breakdown and suicide. The shock, denial, grief, and anger had been pretty much worked through and accepted. What remained was the sadness of knowing that my mom would never see the grandchild she had yearned for.
Two days before my baby shower my sister came over with our stepmother, Mary. We’d resented Mary when she first entered our lives, but that resentment had turned into appreciation and, eventually, to love.
Mary handed me a gift bag. Reaching in past the ribbons and tissue paper, I was surprised to feel something woolly. Mary was a master seamstress, yet I’d never known her to knit before. The tag read, “Lovingly made by Grandma.”
“Wow Mary, I didn’t know you could knit too!” I said, admiring the dainty newborn coats.
Mary became teary. She explained that when she’d moved in with my dad, six years earlier, she’d come across my mom’s knitting bag. Inside were the two tiny coats she’d been working on before she died. Mary had been saving the coats for me all these years.
Two days later at my baby shower I proudly related the story of how Mary—of all people—had saved a little piece of my mom for me.
The last gift that day came from Colleen—my mom’s best friend’s daughter. I read Colleen’s card aloud: “Leslie, everything in this basket, including the basket, was given to me by your mother at my own baby shower ten years ago.”
As I held up the various infant ensembles for everyone to see, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. It was lovely to be reminded of my mom’s generosity. We all remembered her that day with fondness and laughter, rather than the grief that had gripped us at the time of her death. She touched others who, in turn, waited years to touch me.
Aurora, Ontario