Chapter 9 - The Seal Eleanor Broke Herself
Two weeks before closing, Mom asked me to meet her in the memorial room.
The red seal still crossed the glass case.
Police no longer needed it preserved.
The insurance company did not care.
It could stay forever if we wanted.
Mom held a pair of scissors.
“Should I call Julian?”
I thought.
“Yes.”
He arrived twenty minutes later.
No one explained much.
Mom looked at the case.
Dad’s medals.
Flag.
Photograph.
Black fireplace poker.
Then she cut the red seal.
A tiny sound.
Almost nothing.
Six years of intact tape broke easier than expected.
She unlocked the case.
Julian flinched.
I noticed.
Mom took out the poker.
Held it.
Then laughed.
“What?”
Julian asked.
“It isn’t heavy as hell.”
He covered his face.
Even he laughed.
Dark humor.
Necessary sometimes.
Mom placed the poker on the table.
“What are you doing with it?” I asked.
“Donation.”
“To who?”
“The estate auction.”
Julian looked horrified for about two seconds.
Then not.
Dad had loved that poker because it came from his grandfather’s home.
Fine.
Someone else could love it next.
Mom kept the medals.
The flag went to me temporarily, though I told Julian it belonged to both of us.
He said:
“You’re the Army one.”
“That doesn’t make Dad’s service mine.”
We eventually gave the flag to a veterans’ archive with Dad’s papers.
Not because we rejected him.
Because memory did not need to remain locked in one room for the family to survive.
Before we left, Mom touched the bruise site near her eye.
Almost faded.
She looked at Julian.
“You called me dangerous.”
He swallowed.
“I know.”
“You knew I didn’t hit you with that.”
“Yes.”
“Why that story?”
He answered faster than I expected.
“Because I needed something people would understand immediately.”
That was honest.
“I thought if I said you shoved me, they’d ask why. If I said you were confused, they’d debate it. A weapon makes the room simple.”
I looked at him.
He continued.
“I needed simple.”
Mom nodded.
“That is what your father always needed too.”
Julian winced.
Then accepted it.
Simple stories.
Dangerous mother.
Protective son.
Heroic father.
Absent daughter.
Ungrateful widow.
Selfless caregiver.
Stories that remove the need to ask what each person actually chose.
We had lived inside them for years.
May you like
Mom closed the empty case.
No seal this time.
