Pilfered Lace

The enormity of what I have just done has hit me like a wrecking ball into an unsuspecting wall of brick.

I have pilfered my Mum's hand crocheted lace.

Well, not even her lace, but my grandmother's lace.

And since my Mum will be 101 on this June 5th well, then that's some pretty old lace.

I have coveted this box of lace for ages.  Ever since my Mum started handing it out to me, piece by piece, like special candy treats.  She's been doing it forever.  Since the time I first moved to my own apartment.

Every now and again.....she'd gift me with a piece of  crochet lace from the box.

Endless excitement on a day like that when I possessed another piece to display!

(I was, perhaps, the only 20 year old with furniture sporting antimacassars!

  You gotta admire a good antimacassar!)

The ritual brought to me a love of dear, old things, painstakingly crafted by a woman I never met.

Grandma passed before I was born.

But, still, I have always had a picture in my mind of that faceless lady bent over her work of an evening.

And then one day, Mum stopped.  Stopped gifting the lace.

She said to me one day:  "Now you have to wait until I'm gone."

And of course, I promised.

And now, now I have broken my promise and pilfered that lace.

I hadn't meant to.  But, one thing leading to another and Mum, nearing 101, just isn't able to stay in her home any longer.   Nor my daughter's either.  And the goddess knows my poor daughter gave it her all.

But, it wasn't meant to be.

 Another promise not kept.

I wish I could bring her these lovely pieces and pretty up her room.

But, Mum's not the woman now to appreciate the lovely and would be all the sadder (and madder)

 that I had touched her things.  The upset would never be equal to the beauty.

She would find, now, no comfort in this lace.

I laugh out loud when I think of a character on a  favorite television show, Sheldon Cooper of Big Bang Theory-  "A home?  We'd never put Meemaw in a home!"

You say that.

  But circumstance is a harsh mistress and Mum now

 resides in a care facility and her home to be scattered to the four winds in hopes that her long loved belongings will be honored by the people who take them.

That's one promise I can keep.

~MF 2012