The Private Investigator

On this day, I spent considerable time playing “the concentration game,” matching empty CD cases with stray CDs.

What else did I do? Looked through about 1/3 of dad’s old classical albums. Continued to find priceless family photos and random items of interest in cartons of electronic devices, hardware, tools and parts. Discovered occasional mathematical calculations or parts lists on index cards and scraps of paper.

It was a magical window into my father’s mind and his life. It was strange to think that despite visits every two weeks since mom died, multiple calls a day and endless long conversations, I did not know him very well. How he must have viewed me, with my spiritualist ideas, running off to rock concerts and posting crazy philosophical articles on my blog, from his scientific and agnostic perspective!

Upstairs, I was in my mother’s realm. While looking through their bureau drawers, I came across two books, hidden away beneath clothes. One was an interesting looking memoir by Vernon Jordan. The other was a guide for women survivors of child sexual abuse. Although this surprised me, it made sense, since she kept her early history tucked away like a terrible yet precious jewel. She told her psychiatrists about her past, but we didn’t talk about it as a family, as close as we were.

Of Mom’s painful childhood, I had known since I was 12, when she had to be hospitalized for an extended period and we had to attend family and group therapy sessions. Dad told me, and I’m not sure how I took it then. I remember being smitten by an eighteen-year-old patient at the facility. As for her reticence to discuss her past with me, I took that to mean that she never really addressed it, but I realized upon seeing this book in her drawer that I was wrong. Just as the subject of incest was considered ‘taboo’ to discuss at the kitchen table, so too was a book about the subject considered too delicate to leave out on a dresser, exposed to public view.

I flipped through its pages and was further surprised to find a small newspaper clipping about a book written about Dominican Republic dictator Rafael Trujillo, who was said to be a rampant sexual predator, and his connection with Eleanor Roosevelt, who was invited by him to his country and politically exploited. Between later pages, there was a bank envelope containing $140 in $20 bills. This was further proof that the book had been moms (and not dad’s reference of how to be a supportive husband). She liked to keep a stash of money around the house, discretely hidden, “just in case.” She had asked my dad to keep an envelope of $5 bills handily tucked away in another drawer, to use as tips for the aides and others who would come and go to help care for her.

What other surprises and unexpected windows into their lives would I uncover as I moved deeper into their belongings? As I hunted for family mementos and tried to prepare the house for the estate sale, I felt like a private investigator.