I Came Here To Leave You
When you can't recognize the things you owned, what's left?
A brief interlude in your day. A coffee break together. For a moment. xoxox
The box arrives on Monday. It’s Wednesday when we open it. Inside are summer clothes sent from an apartment in Montreal where my mother-in-law no longer lives.
These are her clothes.
She holds up a jean jacket. She wore it when we were all younger, her hair was brown and curly, her eyes bright with her fun smile. Standing here now, I can see this version of her on a sunny day in Montreal many years ago, wearing this jacket.
“Who does this belong to?” she asks, holding it up, putting one arm in, then taking it off.
“It’s yours.”
Her face creasing as she searches for a memory, but she’s mystified.
We don’t know how long her Alzheimer’s will allow her to recognize us—her son, her grandchildren, me—so our aim is small moments of beauty in each day she has left.
Opening this box is supposed to be our gift to her today: a friend carefully selected these clothes for her, forwarded them with a couple of small pieces of art and a photograph. It’s all beautiful. “Who does this belong to?” she asks, again.
“It’s yours.” I repeat. When she ask for a fourth time, I reply: “If you like this jacket, you can keep it.”
“I like it. But I don’t know to whom it belongs.”
Her memory is a dissolving mystery, from which it’s becoming harder to gather clues, but her English is superb. Mostly. The other night at two in the morning when she walked through the upstairs floor of our house in the dark, sobbing and confused, she could only speak French. I pulled her to me in a hug and we held on for a long time while she calmed down, before we navigated back downstairs into her bedroom.
Tiny steps in the dark.
“Est-ce que tu dors ici?” she asked. It means: “Do you sleep here?”
“You sleep here,” I soothed, tucking her back in, hoping she’d be able to speak English again in the morning. Which she could.
This is a piece about losing someone.
We go through the box together, the heavy grey clouds outside suggesting rain. We hold up racy underwear. She laughs. “I don’t know who these belong to.” I tuck them away and we work our way through other clothes she gathered over the years, items that she once picked up in a store and turned over, much as we turn them over now, selecting pretty things—a striped shirt with a white collar, black leggings with an artistic red slash at the shin, an orange dress that she now holds upside-down.
“What is it?” she asks, shaking the dress as if it might reveal its secrets.
All smiles have deteriorated and the air is shifting between us: she knows on some level that these clothes have a relationship with her, but she can’t grasp it. The mystery of her own life is upon her and it’s vivid to witness.
“Let’s choose only what you like. But let’s do it later,” I suggest, taking a newspaper and steering her to the sofa where she can sit with her little dog. She likes it on the sofa, she adores her dog, and she immediately pets her beloved companion. The clothes are piled on a chair and soon, when I’ve steadied, I’ll put them away in her cupboard.
The gift isn’t the box. It isn’t the clothes, which, it turns out, she has already lost. It’s the time in the moment unpacking before she loses her smile. It’s the laugh when she see the racy underwear that I’ve now thrown away.
It’s already gone. And while our aim to give her beautiful moments seems vital, what I realise is that she’s giving us beautiful moments.
We are the ones who get to hold onto them—we hold the memories now. She came here to leave us, after all.
Thanks for reading this. Please share with someone you love or who you think might love to read this, too.
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shares advice for carers. is always inspiring and just so fun to read. has me thinking. is a new Substack to me and somewhere I plan to explore as I learn about death and dying. who I’ve subscribed to for months who teaches memoir and writes beautifully. And I just subscribed to who has tons for me to read and catch up on.As for novels, well, I’m deep into crime fiction and I just finished Red Dirt Road by S. R. White, which I loved so much I turned around and bought the next one in the Dana Russo series.
If you’re new here, my name is Alice Kuipers and I’m a writer, mother and dog-owner transplanted twenty years ago to the Canadian prairies from England. I’ve published fourteen books in 36 countries and my writing has been described as: “For storytellers and story lovers,” by Kirkus Reviews; ‘Gorgeous, heart-ripping, important,” by VOYA; and “Intense and wonderful” by Bif Naked.
Join me for coffee breaks on here.
Xoxo
Aww Alice, I had to step away after reading this. You have such a gentle-truth-saying in your words that speaks to the heart-sink and ache.
When they can't recognise their things I've seen people become frustrated and more sad. You're all holding her memories...and perhaps you can make up new stories...of being given these clothes and how the lady who owned them must have been....stylish, elegant..
Creating a new reality, context...THIS 'The gift isn’t the box. It isn’t the clothes, which, it turns out, she has already lost. It’s the time in the moment unpacking before she loses her smile. It’s the laugh when she see the racy underwear that I’ve now thrown away.' is exactly it!
Less what and more how, and all about quality of time... A soft, poignant glimpse into what can be eggshell-sharp, fraught times Thank you.
Thanks for the shout-out too! xo
Wow. What an incredibly tender, poignant and touching essay. The last paragraph made me weep 🤍