Be Careful What You Wish For...

After nearly 3 years of begging, whining and cajoling, I finally had the first batch of Marina's things brought back to me, and it hurt every bit as much as I expected it to hurt.

It wasn't everything, not by any stretch of the imagination -- just a box and two garbage bags of stuff. And of course, Ed couldn't have been bothered to have dealt with it himself, oh no. His mother was the one who finally told him that she was going to bring the things that had been at her house all this time to me because I had waited long enough. Apparently he had been telling her not to bring them to me because he wanted to go through them himself first, but being the procrastinator-in-denial he is, he kept putting it off. And she had finally had enough.

So she brought the stuff over last night and made it a point to take a plastic bag containing two small boxes out of the one larger box to give to me. She told me it was some of Marina's jewelry she knew I would want. I tried opening them but they were taped shut, so she opened them carefully for me. The first contained one of Marina's bracelets, a silver chain with a letter M on it.

The second revealed something we had been looking for ever since we first went to view her at the mortuary: her charm bracelet, the one Diana and I had given her for her birthday the year before, that she had been wearing almost every day. We had collected a variety of charms of things she loved: various cats and Peter Rabbit and little odds and ends that we knew she would like. As soon as I saw it, everything came flooding back and I couldn't stop crying.

Ed's mother felt terrible, she said she knew that we had been looking for the bracelet, but she kept hoping he would do the right thing and come take these things to me. She didn't feel right doing anything behind his back or she would have said something or brought them to me sooner. She said she is going to keep working on him to bring the rest over as soon as possible, and that he and his new wife are going to be moving in about a month, so they have to get the stuff moved by then.

It was hard for me to keep from losing it when Diana asked how his wife was doing and whether they knew whether they were having a girl or a boy. When his mother said they were having a girl, all I could think was how he was going to be going on with his life, he was going to have a little girl to hold and to love, and mine was gone forever.

I remembered reading something the other night that Marina had written to a friend about how she had just recently gotten back together with Ed for "the fifth or sixth time," how she hadn't planned on it, but she had ended up feeling so guilty and he had begged her to stay and promised her that everything would be better. And she had really wanted to believe him, even though she knew it wasn't really going to happen. She just felt she had to give him another chance because she felt guilty for her part in their relationship going south. My heart broke realizing that she was so fragile and so mixed up, not at all the way I had thought she appeared on the outside, not the self she showed me.

I knew I shouldn't have, but I spent most of the night going through the rest of the things, piece by piece -- an unfinished letter, loving and cheerful and full of hope, written inside a birthday card to my sister. Medical bills and court fines so big she could never have hoped to have paid them -- one huge hospital bill for an overdose that had left her on a ventilator, nearly dead, eight years ago (not heroin, but a very long and bizarre story). An empty bottle of methadone. A medical alert card that stated she was on methadone and to be careful what kind of medications to give her. Various hair clips and bands and decorations. Enough makeup for a small army of drag queens -- she obviously had more than one addiction. I opened up each lipstick, each eye shadow, and smelled the smells that reminded me of her. I shook up each bottle of fingernail polish and remembered how carefully she would paint her long nails and how she always wore colors to match her moods.

Her blue and white kimono, her red fuzzy bathrobe, her bellydance belt. Pictures of Morrissey, articles about Crowded House. Various Hello Kitty and Ren and Stimpy and Spongebob Squarepants note papers and Valentine cards. Paycheck stubs and work-related notes. Her report card from first grade. Her driver's license. Handwritten notes with phone numbers and date and reminders to herself. One of her Harry Potter books. Stacks of letters saved from friends, some of them from when she was in junior high school. Several notebooks, some with evidence of how hard she had tried to get herself together -- whole daily schedules written out to the minute, with walks and meditation and baths and shopping lists and healthy meals detailed.

It was all too much for me. I didn't go to bed until nearly 5 a.m., and I had to get up at 7 to get ready for work, since I had to ride with Diana while my car is waiting to be taken to the mechanic for some work. This made the third night in a row with less than four hours of sleep, and I am feeling it today. I feel so old and so sad.

Part of me is dreading having to go through the rest of her things when they finally do come home. Part of me can't stop thinking about how many tears I've cried over that bracelet, how many times I'd wondered if she'd lost it somewhere along the way or given it to one of the people she'd met in rehab, or maybe sold it for a few bucks to help her buy her last fix.

Part of me can't stop thinking about that little baby girl; about MY little baby girl, and how much it hurts to know that I'll never hold her again, or never have that little grandchild of my own.

Maybe I was better off not being reminded of all these things. Maybe I was better off when I was starting to forget...