Taking Care of Mama

.Joared, at Along the Way, Menial Tasks And Warm Feelings and Joy at Joy of Six, Ho- Ho... Humbug recently wrote about having to do the tasks their husbands used to do after their deaths, and it made me think of my Dad. He was 20 years older than my mother, and in the natural course of things he knew that he would die before she would. He also knew that my brother Forrest would be doing many of the tasks my Dad had done.

One of the things Daddy did was keep track of where things were. My mother can never remember where she puts things, although she often puts them in the same place. She thinks she's out, buys more, and when she goes to put the new can of beans away, there are three or fout others. For years after he died, Mama would open a cupboard and find a note that said something like, "Now, Virginia, the olives are in the cupboard in the den. You always look for them here and you always put them there."

Forrest would go to do some task he hadn't done before, and at the repair site he would find a note from our Dad telling him where the fuses were kept or the fastest way to unclog the garbage disposal after Mama put potato peels down it one more time.

Forrest tells me he probably hasn't found the last of them; he expects that even after 23 years, one day he will go to repair something that hasn't needed it in all this time, and there will be another note. Daddy, still taking care of Mama.