Thank You Notes

Thank You Notes

By Cheryl Pope

Dear Aunt Sally and Uncle Ray,

Thank you for coming to our wedding and for the twenty-five dollar check. We’ll put it to good use. 

Joel enjoyed meeting you. He’s never met anyone from Hoboken and he loved your accents. You’re right, it would have been lovely to have Sicilian Pizza at our reception. We’ll have to remember that for our next party. 

 You both looked great. I loved Uncle Ray’s new toupee. So realistic!

Your niece, 

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Dear Mrs. Johnson,

Thank you for playing the organ at our wedding and for the salt and pepper shakers. You did a lovely job and don’t you worry about the mess up on the bridal march. No one noticed and if they did, who doesn’t love the Star Bangled Banner? It takes a great organist to segue from the National Anthem into Lohengrin’s Bridal chorus with such finesse.

Gratefully,

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Dear Aunt Esther and Uncle Paul,

 It was so good to see you at our wedding. Thanks for coming all the way from Williamsport and thank you so much for the dog dishes. We don’t have a dog now but will probably get one at some point and the dishes will come in handy. It’s nice that the dishes say “Dipsy” since that’s just what we’d name our dog if we get one. I’m sorry the reception hall wouldn’t allow you to bring Dipsy. I hope she wasn’t too lonely in grandma’s bathroom. Now that she’s blind she probably didn’t even know where she was and the fluffy rug probably felt good on her old bones. 

Sincerely,

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Dearest Nancy,

Thanks for being the best maid of honor and my best friend since we were ten years old. Thanks for always keeping our secrets. Yes, I will fix you up with Joel’s best man as soon as his divorce is final!

No really, you know me better than anyone. You give the best gifts, you have the best advice and the best shoulder to cry on.

Can’t believe that we’re both married! No matter what, let’s be friends forever! Pinky Promise.

Your best friend,

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Dear Sister Agnes,

It was lovely to see you again after so many years. Thank you very much for the rosary beads. My husband is Jewish and, as you know, I am now Methodist, but I’m sure we’ll find a good use for the beads. I’m thinking we could hang a planter from them in the window or put them on our Christmas tree this year. Thanks.

By the way I had no idea you were so good at the electric slide! I’m thinking it must be those sensible shoes you wear.

Blessedly,

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Dear Grammie,

Thank you so much for the oil painting you did of the horse, or was it a unicorn? We noticed that one of its legs was much shorter than the other three and the horse’s body was unusually long. Was it a rescue horse? Anyway it’s really nice and I think I’ll hang it in the laundry room so I can look at it while I’m folding clothes.

Love,

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Dear Nana and Pop Pop,

Thank you for the wedding gifts. It’s so nice that they are homemade. It makes them special.  

Nana, we love the crocheted toilet paper holder you made and you’re right, white goes with everything. We never have to worry about being in there and not having an extra roll.

And Pop Pop, thank you for the outdoor sign you made with the last name and address. You do realize that we’ll both be using Joel’s last name and not my maiden name but I’m sure people will figure it out, especially people who know my maiden name. The rest will just have to go by the house number.

Love, 

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Dear Mom,

Remember how you nagged me to send out thank you notes after Joel and I got married? Admittedly, I was dragging my feet. But one night when Joel and Pete were out shooting pool, Nina came over and we were drinking wine and eating pizza. We were going over the wedding gift list and and got the giggles over some of the gifts people had sent. You always said we were so silly together. This led to us making up crazy thank you notes, just as a joke, and we were laughing so hard we both nearly peed our pants.  

Tonight when I was packing to move I found a box in the back of the closet and those fake thank you notes were in it! I hadn’t realized I’d saved them all these years. I called Nina and we laughed all over again. Then we started talking about 

what we’re really thankful for and who we’d like to send thank you notes to so we could say what’s too awkward to say in person.  

I, of course, thought that you would be the one I would write my thank you note to. I’d have to write it, and could never say it, because you were never gushy or overly emotional. I think you felt uncomfortable to be that vulnerable and maybe, being vulnerable made you feel a little out of control. When I thought about what I would say I realized that I really needed to write a thank you note to God because he made you who you were. He gave you the thoughts, the talent, the courage and the wisdom and you decided to accept what He was offering and put it to use. That’s what I’m grateful for. Your bravery and faith. What He gave you and what you boldly accepted.  

You were so independent. I remember when the washing machine broke you didn’t wait for Dad to come home or for the Maytag guy to come. You grabbed some tools and found that the problem was a broken belt. You called Dad with the part number and by evening you were doing laundry again. In the spring and in the fall you’d take the windows apart, put screens in for the summer or pack them away for the winter. At the same time you washed all the windows inside and out. That’s back when people did spring and fall cleaning. All the neighborhood women waited for their husbands to do the job. Except for washing the windows. In the fifties window washing, and so much more, was a women’s job. It seems that you never got the memo regarding what was a man’s or a woman’s job. If needed doing and you could do it, you Well, not tough as much as did.  

You never made mountains out of molehills unless the molehill started to evolve into a mountain. I remember one time when we were at the ocean and this guy had a snack shack on the beach and he had a monkey. You tried to give the monkey a cookie and it bit you. You didn’t run off to the emergency room or pitch a fit, you just went down to the ocean and stuck your hand in the water believing that salt water would fend off any diseases the monkey may have passed on. I guess it worked but I’ve hated monkeys ever since, by the way.

By watching you I learned how to be independent to think things through before jumping off the cliff. I wasn’t always as good at it as you were. Growing up with you and my grandmothers created in me a distaste and some amount of intolerance for weak women, You know the ones. They can’t do anything for themselves and they don’t even try. My friend, Sue, brags that she has never touched a lawnmower or held a hammer in her life. Some women can’t function without a man to take care of them. If the toilet gets clogged they have to run to the neighbor’s to pee until hubby gets home from work to plunge. Every little sniffle and they’re off to urgent care and they have to stay in bed for days and be waited on hand and foot. When they’re in a bad mood everyone knows it and their moods swing like a pendulum between tremendous joy and the depths of despair. You never know what to expect. Mom, I guess when you weren’t feeling well or in a bad mood you must have locked yourself in the basement because we never knew it. I even remember that one time you were trying to fix a broken window that some kid belted a snowball through, your hand slipped and you cut your hand badly enough to go to the emergency room for stitches. On the way home you bought extra large rubber gloves so they’d fit over your huge bandage and you could still do the dishes.

You were strong and you taught me not to be a whiner, because you had no time for whining. Remember the time I ran a needle deep into the bottom of my foot and all you said was, “Pull it out.” It was a little more serious than that because you had to get pliers to pull it out. You put alcohol on it and said I’d be fine, but after two days you decided to take me to the doctor because of the red streak that was creeping up my leg.

You cooked the best meals and decorated cakes like a professional. I look around my place now and see oil paintings, watercolors, pastels, intricately knitted blankets and pottery you made. I remember the clothes you sewed for me when I was young, especially a plaid jumper and a pair of shorts with zebras on them. You even made me a winter coat, a bedspread and two prom dresses! Once you made a slipcover for the sofa. Who does that? 

Our family always had the best holidays because of you and Dad, but mostly you. I think back to those days and say to myself, “My god, she must have been exhausted.”

Sometimes when I think of you, you’re hard to believe. You always said that you were nothing but a housewife but you were so smart that if you had been born in a different era you probably would have been the CEO of a large corporation or an elected government official. If you’d been president there’d never be a budget deficit or funding for a project to study why penguins fall over backwards when planes fly over!

You are a hard act to follow and you were a women’s libber before Gloria Steinem ever came up with the term.

So, I’d thank God for creating you to be you.

How could I say thank you for all you are and all you did for me? You were always game for things even in your late eighties and early nineties. Your great-grandchildren were given a gift that few receive in that they not only knew their great-grandmother but they went on trips with her, played games with her, took walks, went fishing, picked strawberries for jam, sang songs and read stories. They had a great-grandmother who played music with them, taught some of them to knit and to play Scrabble, Canasta and Mexican Train and spent hours on the floor playing with dolls or building forts. She went to ball games, school concerts, graduations, and plays, many of which were probably extremely painful to endure.

I prayed for you everyday. I’d say, “God, just keep Mom upright and moving forward today.” And He did.

You were on committees in the senior community where you lived. You went to exercise class three times a week, line dancing, bingo, movies, concerts, art galleries and worked part time in the store. You cooked your meals and cleaned your apartment. You even folded those damn fitted sheets until you moved in with Tom and Lynn.

Wonder Woman - nothing could stop you.

When you were in your mid-nineties I began to face the reality that you wouldn't be here forever, but somehow no one really believed that. You had always been there and were always there now. My hands moved a certain way and I saw your hands. I’d catch a glimpse of someone in an airport mirror and briefly wonder why you were at the airport until I realized it was myself I saw. Words came out of my mouth and they were yours, not mine. So many times I thought or did something and heard your voice scolding me or encouraging me.

I always thought that you loved Tom more. And who wouldn’t? He looked like a young Magnum PI. Tom was the one who did everything right. He was a boy scout, a lacrosse player, and a college graduate. He was the one who made sensible choices, got married and stayed married. He was the one who lived closest to you and therefore was the one who took you to the doctor, fixed your cable TV, and picked up your prescriptions. I was far away and I felt bad that I wasn’t there to do things for you.

But, Mom, I thought about how you and I went to the Norman Rockwell museum and to Lincoln’s summer home because you wanted to. You wanted to go back to your hometown and visit your last living relatives and I took you. I sat in hot stuffy rooms on weird looking furniture listening to old people talking about bygone days and people I’d never known and never would since they were all dead. I drove around a cemetery for over an hour looking for the gravestones of some of your relatives until it was starting to get dark and we gave up. We went to the symphony and plays and Cirque Du Soleil and I watched Young Sheldon and Family Fued with you, which Tom would never do. We played duets on the piano and spent hours playing card and word games.  

It was me, and not Tom, who knew the exact kind of corn pads you used and the bathroom cups you preferred. When Tom and his wife thought it was dumb for a woman in her nineties to want eyebrow pencil, I understood, and I not only got it but I got the exact one you wanted.  

I took you to 31 Flavors for ice cream when I came to visit and I automatically knew what to order and I always brought the maple cheddar cheese you loved and couldn’t get where you lived. I knew which restaurants you liked and what kind of jewelry to buy you. I knew that you loved shoes. Those are some of the things I knew that no one else knew. That’s where I was the favorite child.

I was also the one who planned your seventieth and ninetieth birthday parties and the family reunion.

Time goes on and we believe that what we have today is what we’ll have tomorrow or next year, with the exception of hot fudge sundaes! Somehow our eyes are blurred when it comes to seeing movements slowing down or unsteady steps here and there in people we love.

And God, I really have no way of thanking you. The words have never been invented.

I prayed that when the time came for Mom to leave us that it would be easy. Such a bold request. Probably millions of people in the world wish for that and how many of us are granted that request?  

I prayed that she would not suffer and that she would maintain her dignity because being proper and in control was very important to Mom. I prayed that she would not be afraid.

Mom had just gotten out of the shower. Lynn, my sister in law, had helped her bathe. She was dressed and her hair was combed. She had complained about her eggs that morning because they were scrambled and she hoped that tomorrow she could have fried. She was talking about getting a haircut in a couple of days and planning her one hundredth birthday party, two months away. She knew just the kind of cake she wanted and had gotten the recipe out of her recipe box a few days before. 

Obviously she wasn’t thinking of leaving that day, but she did.  

Once she was dressed, teeth brushed and hair combed she went to sleep in her chair and left us quietly,her unfinished crossword in her lap, her pencil on the floor.

It’s hard to be thankful when your heart is breaking. It’s hard to be thankful for all you had when you don’t have it anymore and you know you never will again. It’s hard when something you figured would be around forever isn’t.

Now when my gestures are more my Mom’s than mine and when I see a picture of myself with her smile I wish so much that she was still here. I don’t want her smile or her motions. I want her to have them back. When I have tough problems or I want to call her on the phone and say, “What was the name of that song?” or “Who was that lady who lived next door?” I can’t.

And so, God, this is my thank you note to you. Thank you for giving me a mom that I miss so much. Thank you for letting me have her for so long. Thank you that I still hear her voice in my head and that I can look around my house and see her in paintings, handiwork, recipe cards and remember her fingers on the piano keys. I see a certain candy bar and almost reach out to pick it up for her. 

Thank you, God, for making her leaving easy. Thank you for letting her have her dignity. Thank you for answering my prayer.