So last year around the time my mom passed away I started knitting a stole for myself. I started it when I was up for the summer and she even helped me pick out the color and yarn. Wearing it became sort of a strange commemoration, something tangible that immediately brings back all of my sense memories from that time. The smells, the feeling in my stomach, the sun rising and setting on all of the places we shuttled ourselves around to and from in a fog. It sounds like a morbid thing to want to commit to yarn, to wear as an accessory, but it's oddly comforting.
And so with the anniversary coming up I had already sort of unconsciously started planning what this year's stole would be. I used a baby blanket pattern that I liked knitting back in January in a deep rust. I wanted something really sizable, and very wide so it would look as good stretched out like a big wrap as folded in half and scrunched up like a scarf.
The stole I made last year reminds me a great deal of the rings that I wear, actually. Last summer my mom was giving very specific directions for my dad and I to gift and distribute all of her belongings. After a meal, while one of us was sitting on the lazyboy in her room reading, thinking, trying not to cry, etc., while she snored, she would suddenly awake, and with a determined look would tell us exactly where an item was, and who should get it based on an anecdote or a feeling she had that it would serve a special purpose for them. Every day she did this, in the same way that you bolt awake when you feel the sunshine and think you've overslept before realizing it's Saturday. Her memory of random objects was hilarious. She was never wrong, too; the woman was meticulously organized.
One thing she had me distribute fairly early on was the jewelry. included was a family ring that I inherited from my paternal grandmother over a decade ago. I had completely forgotten about it, but I've worn it daily since.
On and on she went, with all of her possessions. She had us make lists and followed up to make sure we had called the right people and had gifted all we were instructed to. Letters with cheques were mailed and everything slowly and steadily flowed out of the house. It was like she wanted to be completely untied to this world, to leave nothing for anyone else to clean up. (Though, in all honestly, I think she just didn't trust that we knew the worth or the use of the objects and was scared we'd just drop 30 boxes in front of the thrift store and be done with it.)
It struck me as so fitting. And then I remembered the Faulkner quote (ironically, written in As I Lay Dying) that talks about emptying yourself for sleep:
"In a strange room you must empty yourself for sleep. And before you are emptied for sleep, what are you. And when you are emptied for sleep, what are you. And when you are emptied for sleep you are not. And when you are filled with sleep, you never were. I don't know what I am. I don't know if I am or not. Jewel knows he is, because he does not know that he does not know where he is or not. He cannot empty himself for sleep because he is not what he is and he is what he is not. Beyond the unlamped wall I can hear the rain shaping the wagon that is ours, the load that is no longer theirs that felled and sawed it nor yet theirs that bought it and which is not ours either, lie on our wagon though it does, since only the wind and the rain shape it only to Jewel and me, that are not asleep. And Jewel is, so Addie Bundren must be. And then I must be, or I could not empty myself for sleep in a strange room. And so if I am not emptied yet, I am is."
— William Faulkner (As I Lay Dying: The Corrected Text)
I knew what she was doing and her reasons behind it from the beginning. I remember exactly the day and the moment she searched and searched the perfect caves of her memory, her eyes darting back and forth the way they do when you are recalling and focused, and found nothing else. She looked empty, and satisfied. It was like she knew her job was done. I left a few days later, and came back 2 weeks later when she died.
The family ring looks old but well-cared for and appropriately tarnished in crevices. It has all of the birthstones of her kids and her husband with hers is in the middle. I wear it on my right hand to remind me of where I've come from, and my wedding ring tells me where I'm going. Similarly, the stole reminds me of everything to do with that time; the awful wasting, the inability to change the inevitable, the frustration and despair, but also the precious moments pregnant with hope and affection. The foot rubs that would make her sigh with a happiness that was an honor to give, the daily, hourly displays of strength and grace. Life's a tradeoff.
