Watching my parents’ history disappear behind the closed door of the Salvation Army Donation truck
created an un-swallow-able lump that does not go away all day. Sometimes the tears just come,
embarrassing me in front of the movers or as the care-givers stop by to say good-bye.

I save as much as possible of things that have much of my own history: my paternal grandmother’s
treadle sewing machine, my maternal grandmother’s steamer trunk, filled with toys from my childhood.
But I have to let go of so many things. I glance at the box where I had stacked the vintage plastic
Melmac dishes—state of the art in 1956, which replaced the enameled tin plates formerly used at our
family mealtimes. The oak desk purchased on their 11th wedding anniversary, with the special hide-away
type-writer tray, went effortlessly into the truck strapped to the dolly and harness of the mover. Furniture
and boxes become stripped of personal meaning and history as they fill the donation truck.

The new nursing unit room that is now my mother’s home is small. It consists of a hospital bed, a TV
armoire, and two remaining pieces of my mother’s furniture: her lounge chair and a small secretary desk.
On Valentines’ Day 2002, I sent my mother a bouquet of Valentine Cookies by Design. Each heart
shaped cookie is decorated in red frosting with a name of one of my family members written in white:
Steve, Linda, Stefan, Whitney and Eileen. Each cookie is held in place by a thin wooden dowel-stick and
the five cookies are assembled as if they are a bouquet of flowers in a basket. The cookies are delicious
when fresh and eaten with a hot cup of coffee.

The following summer when I visit her home in North Carolina, the cookies are still in the bouquet basket
wrapped in the original cellophane and ribbon. My mother says that they are too pretty to eat. “They are
too stale to eat by now and they need to be thrown away” is my disappointed comment. Each visit over
the following years, I grimace at the stale arrangement of cookies becoming petrified with time. But the
cookies remain.

In 2006, my mother moves to an assisted living apartment near me in Cincinnati. As I help prepare for
the move, I envision the cookies finally finding their way to the trash. But my mother expresses a deep
desire to take the cookies with her, so I relent and carefully place the cellophane wrapped fading
bouquet in a box. The cookies remain in her Cincinnati apartment, always visible to her from her lounge
chair.

So, this week as I am packing up, donating and throwing away her things, I envision those cookies finally
disappearing in the trash. As she is being wheeled in her wheelchair out of her apartment for the last
time, she notices the cookies and says, “Please bring my Valentines to my new room”. Fatigue and
frustration is all I feel.

It is almost midnight when I finish cleaning up from the details of her life in the apartment. Downstairs
in the nursing unit room, I quietly place the cookie bouquet on top of the institutional TV armoire. There
is only a night-light lighting the room. My presence causes her to stir from her sleep. She looks up and
sees the cookies. For the first time today, a smile stretches across her face. “Thank you for bringing my
cookies. I love looking at them.” In the dim light, I look at the contentment on her face and wonder
how at the end of life a person decides what’s most important to keep. For my mother, it is a faded
bouquet of petrified cookies.