Show and Tell: Memory Box

For Show and Tell this week, I decided to get a little brave. I have a box containing cards, letters, and the like from my mom's funeral. I've mentioned before that this box lives in my hall closet. I walk by it every day, sometimes I look at it, but generally I walk by it without looking at it.

I don't think I'm to the point in my journey to acceptance, to have this box in my room or out in the open. I don't think I am ready to have that box within my reach. I've looked into this box a few times. Sometimes it's to put something in, I want to keep as a remembrance. And sometimes it's to look through the papers in the box. I looked at it in January when I got home from church, on the anniversary of her death. I, of course, cried my eyes out like I do every time I look into that box.

Every time I open that box, I lose my breath. I have to remind myself to breath. I have to take a deep breath. I sit on the bed and I look and read through every thing in there. I read the poem we picked out to go over her picture on her memorial booklet we had at her funeral. I read the cards I got from people wishing me well after her death. I look at her picture, and I cry. It's so hard to look at that box, but SO much harder to look IN that box. It brings back the day she died and it beings back the day of her funeral. It makes my heart to break to realize that all these questions I have, will never be answered by MY mother. Yes, I have a MIL, but it's not the same. Yes, I have my father, but once again, it's not the same.

It's a small and unassuming box, but to me, it's whats left of my mom. I hope one day, soon maybe, I will be able to have a shelf in my house and be able to put it up on there. I kind of feel bad that it's just sitting in a dark closet that holds towels and such, but for my mental health, it can't be out in the open. Not right now, at least.

Go on over to Mel's blog and see what everyone else is bring to Show and Tell.