Dear Dolly........Love Mom (2004)

The call came in shortly after lunch. All the girls in the office decided to hit the new Indian restaurant that day and take an extended lunch hour. By the time she sat in her chair she was ready to go into a deep food coma, fat and happy and not interested in work. The day had been atypically sunny for that time of year and that put everyone in better spirits.
When she answered the phone she was smiling,

“Customer Service, how may I help you?”
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“Yes, this is she.”
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“What? When did it happen?”
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She hung up the phone.

Her head was spinning. She wished she had not picked up the phone. She felt like she should cry, but she was too stunned to do much of anything. She had to say the words in her head several times before she could say them out loud and only then could she really understand what they meant.

“Your mother passed away this morning. She had a massive stroke.” she whispered to herself

It was unbelievable, just a few hours before she had been swapping ‘crazy mother’ stories with her friends at lunch. She had never been really close to her mom; in fact some would say they were strangers. She could not remember the last time she even got a call or a card on her birthday. She had no idea she was even sick if she was sick at all.
Since her mom divorced her dad, moved out of state and started working at the grocery store fifteen years ago, she never really heard from her. If they talked at all it was because she made the effort, not her mother.

“I never really felt like she wanted me”, she explained to her best friend Jenny who sat in the cube next to her, “This is so surreal, I don’t even know if she has been ill for a long time or what, it has been at least a year since I called her last. I was just so pissed at her for missing my birthday again that I decided not to be the one to call her first this time! I feel like I should be crying, but I can’t.”
“It won’t hit you until you are there” Jenny said, “That is when it will be real, right now, in your head, she still lives in another state. What time is your flight?””
“It is at 7:00 this eve, and yes, you are probably right.” She said


When she arrived in front of her mother’s little apartment complex she took a long while to get out of the cab. She sat and looked at the old brick two story building and tried to imagine her mother coming home from work in her grocery smock walking up the flight of stairs to her apartment. She realized she had never seen the inside of this place and her mother had been living there for over ten years. The lawyer said the manager would let her in, and she just had to get the place sorted out.
The rent was paid through the end of the month and she had a list of all of the donation places around town so she could drop things off. She had rented a truck company to take whatever else she wanted back with her just to be safe. She figured she could just cancel it if there was not anything to salvage.
Her mother had always worked as grocery clerks, or at quickie mart type places, so she imagined all she would have left behind were obviously second hand furniture and maybe a few unpaid bills. Even her car was at least 15 years old, purchased right after the divorce with her father’s money she was sure. Her mother didn’t have anyone in her life. Her mother had always been a loner, so her daughter was all that was left.

“Is this the right place miss?” the cabbie turned and asked with a bewildered look on his face.
“Oh, yes, thank you”, she said and reached in her purse and handed him money, “Keep the change.”
“Thank you!” he said with a big smile, “Do you want me to wait here?”
“No, that will be all for today. Thanks!” she said weakly and got out of the car.
She had tipped him almost what the fare cost, but she tended to be that way when she was feeling guilty about something. It was as if she were trying to make up for something she didn’t do that she should have. She always joked with her friends that it was her ‘Guilt Tip” This thought made her smile a little.

She buzzed the manager and got the keys from him. He was a kindly old man with a bit of an accent. He looked down a lot and told her how he was so sorry for her loss and told her if there was anything he could do to help.... She thanked him and said not to worry, she was sure she had a handle on it.

She took a deep breath at the door way. She put the key in the lock and she turned it slowly. There was a click and the door pushed open.
Immediately after she stepped through the door she was overwhelmed by something. It was a scent, nothing foul, but more of a potpourri of cinnamon and apples and something else, something that can only be described as her mothers scent. It was unmistakable. That is when it happened; her eyes welled up and started to pour tears down her face. Her mother’s scent was all that was left because her mother was gone.

It took her a long time to compose herself, but once she did, she slowly started to walk through the apartment. It was a very small one bedroom unit with a kitchenette and a bathroom. Her mother kept it very clean.
Surprisingly everything was older, but it was in all very nice condition. You could tell her mother took great care of her home. She ran her fingers across the countertops and the fabric on the furniture, like she needed to touch everything her mother touched so she could feel closer to her somehow. She turned down the hall towards the bedroom that is when she saw them; the entire hall was lined with photos of her.
There they were, every school photo ever taken, every photo she had sent over the years in letters that her mother never responded to. She always figured she must have just tossed them out or something. She had no idea she actually looked at them much less framed them!

She could not believe her eyes. Her mother did think about her. But then that little seed of doubt crept in again.
“Knowing mom, she probably hung them up so when she had friends over she could talk about me and play mom of the year like she used to in the past, but this really means nothing. It is just for show!” She thought to herself, “Don’t try and make this woman something she is not just because she is dead now!”


The rest of the day was spent going through her stuff and making two piles, one for donation and one for taking home. There was an unbelievable amount of stuff to go through for such a small place. She had decided to hire a maid service to come finish cleaning the apartment after she got everything out. She didn’t think she would have enough time to do everything.

Once she got to the kitchen she opened a big drawer and it was packed full of papers. “This must be the junk drawer,” she smiled to herself, “We’ve all got them, even mom!”

She pulled the drawer out and walked into the now empty living room with it. She poured herself a glass of the wine she had found in the cupboard and sat down to sort through the papers.
There were bills, receipts, coupons and so on; all of the stuff one would think they might find in a junk drawer. Then she saw it, a pink sealed envelope with her name and address on it but no stamp.
She looked at the envelope in wonder, “What could this be? Why would mom write me a letter and then never send it?”
She was about to open it when her own name caught her eye again. She started rifling quickly through all of the papers and found at least seven sealed pieces of mail addressed to her that were never sent.
Confused, she gingerly opened the first pink envelope. It was a standard greeting card with a very flowery design that read “Happy Birthday Daughter!”
She could feel her face getting hot with tears, she opened the card. There was her mother’s handwriting and a check written to her for $50

My darling daughter,
I have been thinking about you a lot lately, but especially today since it is your birthday. I can’t believe you are already 25 years old! It seems only yesterday you were just the size of a peanut!
Anyway, I want you to know that I love you and I think about you all of the time. Take yourself out to a nice dinner or something on me!
Love you and miss you,
Mom

She read the lines over and over again. She was now 29 years old, her mom wrote this card over four years ago!
She sat for a long time trying to figure out why she didn’t mail it; she knew that all of the other envelopes were probably other missed birthdays and holidays over the last fifteen years. She didn’t know what to do.

There was a knock on the door.

“Hello?” she heard coming from the next room, “Is anyone here?”
It was the person assigned to her by the funeral home that was supposed to be able to help get all of the financial business in order.
“I’m back here.” She said, “Come in, the door is open.”

When he turned the corner he saw that she had been crying, but he seemed un-phased, not in a callous way, but in a way that you knew he has been through this scene a million times before. He is in the funeral business after all or at least a part of it. How are you holding up kid?” he asked in a way that she knew he didn’t really want to hear the answer.
“I’m fine. Ya know?” she said
“Yeah, these things are never fun.” He said and started shuffling papers, “Basically the reason I am here is because I have some papers for you to sign.”
He went on to explain that she would be given power of attorney so she could take care of all of her mothers bills and could use whatever money she had left in the bank account to make sure everything was paid off and then after taxes and funeral expenses she would get whatever was left.
“Also,” he added, “it seems your mom took out some extra life insurance, so if you sign here, we will find out what that is exactly and that way we can use that towards funeral expenses.”

She really only half paid attention to what he was saying, she just signed where he said to sign and did whatever she could to get him out of her hair as quickly as possible. That card had been like a slap in the face to her and the fact there were still more to be opened was more than she could really deal with at that moment.

She decided that she would take the remainder of the cards and stick them in her luggage, she was not ready to open them. The first one was already more than she could cope with.

By the time the apartment was empty, everything was donated and the funeral was over, she was ready to sleep for a week. She got on the plane and slept all five hours back home.

After having been home for about a week, she still had not opened the remainder of the letters, she hadn’t forgotten them she just didn’t know when the right time would be. It had all been so emotionally exhausting for her.
All of her mothers friends from work telling her stories at the funeral about how her mother talked about her all of the time. Stories about how her mother was so proud and how she would bring in photos to work whenever she would get new ones, it seemed her mother had relayed nearly every detail of her life as she sent them in letters. It baffled her why her mother never wrote back, or if she did, why she didn’t mail the letters.

Her phone rang while she was sitting at her desk at work, this time it was a lawyer hired by the funeral home people or something like that. They wanted to know how she would like the remainder of her mother’s estate dealt with. The lawyer said a lot of things that she really didn’t understand, until finally he said, “Well basically after all of the expenses and so on there is a considerable sum left over.”
“You know, I didn’t ask for this, just because I am her only living relative, now I owe all sorts of money!” she snapped, “This sucks, I am not rich, I didn’t ask for this!” she said again
Her stomach sunk, she saw this as the last kiss off by her mom, to die and leave her daughter in debt.
“No miss, you misunderstood me,” the lawyer said, “When I say sum, I mean, she left you a considerable sum.”
“What?” she asked, “What do you mean? How much?”
“Well by my calculations, after taxes, and the funeral expenses including my fees and the after all of her bills are paid up, you should be getting about $350,000!” He said with a tone in his voice that sounded like someone who was calling to say you just won the lottery.
She dropped the phone receiver.
“Hello?” she heard in a tiny voice from the floor, “Hello?”
She grabbed up the receiver, “There has to be some mistake, my mother worked at a grocery store, this isn’t right.”
“No, no mistake miss,” he said, “It seems that she had purchased extra life insurance, and she barely had any bills to speak of, she had considerable savings and she put quite a bit into her 401k. She has you as the beneficiary to everything.”
The more they talked and went over things, it turned out that almost every cent her mother got in the divorce settlement was invested wisely in retirement funds and savings. It seems she had set herself up to retire and be totally taken care of.
This divorce settlement was what started the rift in the first place. Her mother had taken her father to the cleaners and left her behind with him and no money, she was nearly grown so it didn’t matter so much, but it still bothered her. She couldn’t ever bring herself to forgive her mom for that.
Now it had all come back around.


It was three years to the day her mother died. She was sitting in the living room of her new house. She had just cracked a bottle of wine and there was a stack of letters sitting in front of her, three were already opened. She picked up the envelope she was going to open on this anniversary. She took a long drink from her glass and set it aside and took to opening it, it was a letter dated only a few months before her mother died.

Dear Dolly,
Do you remember when I used to call you that as a child? You were just like the cutest little doll. I loved your smell and your sweet little cheeks. You were my dolly.
I know you and I have not talked much this last few years, and I know some of that is my fault.
I really do love you and I am so proud of you, I only wish I had told you sooner, because now that we are both adults, it is so much harder to talk to you about this. I feel like we are strangers and I hate that. I really want to be a part of your life.
I guess I just want you to know that if you ever want to talk to me, I will always be here for you.
No matter what has happened between us, you will always be my Dolly.

Love you always,
Mom