I Slept In a Tomb

By Lynn Moriarty Parman

It was 1990 and her Bible was chock full of letters and notes from children and grandchildren extolling her virtues. Drawers and store rooms were not disturbed since Joyce's death four years earlier. But her plants were taken care of and they were thriving. One small room downstairs has become my brother's dressing room and his new wife's office. Stacks of newspapers and magazines from two accounting businesses tower near their living room chairs.





I saw collections of trinkets etc, not disturbed in the beautiful antique show cases for china; crucifixes and "Mary" mementos, and a beautiful wooden rosary draped on one wall as I had noticed the last time I visited, when Joyce was alive. A library of books is undisturbed in the upstairs hall, and the Grandfather clock ticking away time, chimes nine p.m.in the hallowed halls of memory. A collection of bells, carnival glass and Hummel's is dusty on another shelf.There's a family picture gallery on a 5-tiered corner shelf, family wedding pictures, group pictures, baby pictures and grandkids. Even the kitchen cupboards have been undisturbed....the new wife eating out or at her own home across town.

When will my brother put my sister-in-law to rest? When he and his new wife have found a place of their own? Who will go through her things? Jewelry boxes, sewing drawers. Will he walk away from this antique shrine just taking his clothes and a few personal items, leaving the six children to clean out the drawers? Or will he actually experience the necessary part of grieving by sorting through his first wife's personal drawers, books etc. and letting the grown children decide what mementos they would like to keep of their mother's? She was a real home body, sewing and cooking for her kids and grandkids. She had a great sense of humor. It truly was sad when she fell over dead while working in her flower garden at the age of 47. I was present at that funeral but felt strange sleeping in a virtual tomb four years later, the bed that had been their marriage bed. My brother had not slept in it since her death. It helped me to understand the grief process is different with everyone who must experience it. And that there is no set time for getting on with your life. Sigmund Freud wrote in a letter to a friend: "Although we know that after such a loss the acute state of mourning will subside, we also know that we shall remain inconsolable and will never find a substitute. No matter what may fill the gap, even if it be filled completely it nevertheless remains something else."

Lynn Moriarty Parman is author of Mushroom Marathon, Running Toward the Prize of Serenity 2004, Authorhouse. For more information go to her website at http://www.images-of-joy-literature.com/