Years ago, when mom died, you all read about the 20 plastic totes of memories in the basement of her house. Pictures, articles, obituaries, birth announcements, first communions, wakes, and simple stuff like when the girls were photographed jumping rope in 1973 and the picture was printed in the paper. IN THE PAPER! In 1973! The old paper stuff feels important, historic, even if it is just two little girls and a rope on Embargo Street in Rome, NY…in 1973.*

The “Sorting of The Totes”, a family tradition since the Middle Ages**, resulted in mountains of memories and momentos being distributed to each totes’ primary focus. Each child, grandchild or miscellaneous stranger had their own tote. Mom made two for me, her favorite.  At the time of the distribution, we all probably did the same thing: took a quick look and put the tote(s) up on a shelf.

Eight years later, in 2024, in preparations to move to NY and recovery, both my totes were front and center in the back of the car. In April 2024, the totes were picked up, carried to the door of the apartment house, set down in the elevator to the second floor, picked up and carried into the apartment, and put on a closet shelf. For two years. I can’t remember the reason for recently pulling them down and going through them, but the event was mind-boggling. The totes are both a Pandora’s Box*** of—

Ai says opening Pandor’s Box “released all of the worlds’ sorrows: disease, old age, famine, jealousy, and death.” They came flowing out and spread all over the world. Mom’s totes aren’t like that, are they? Maybe. Looking at photos of people from The Past, with most being complete strangers, can cause sorrow, and most of the subjects of the photos and articles are dead, so, there’s that, too. Look how happy they were, how joyous, how young, and how invincible…jealousy? Envy? Relief? Foretelling future deaths? Even seeing my 3-year-old myself bundled up for an afternoon of roiling in the snow inspired the question of why we have to grow old, can’t we stay young, forever? Then there’s the journal mom kept when she visited Switzerland, lamenting the cold while admiring the beauty. Her words in her time, now in mine.

Bet you don’t know the end of the Pandora’s Box legend. I didn’t, until Ai recited the entire story. After “The Sorrows of The World” poured out and spread across the globe, there was one thing left in the box. Ai says it was trapped in the bottom, under everything else, and Pandora didn’t see it, at first: One last gift from the gods.

It was hope.

When you look at photos of generations of relatives and friends and strangers who are no longer on this plane of existence, when you see how bright and alive they were, you begin to wonder, to imagine how much of your life will be in a plastic tote, and how soon will it happen. The existential question is normal, human, and helped a great deal by the The Hope stuck in the box, but it is still a question.

Unlike the original sorrows flitting away into the world, what do I do, what do WE do with the totes and their contents?  The Memories. What happens if we burn them, throw them away, or cut them up? Does it affect those no longer here? Does it make them “more gone”?

Screw it. Lunchtime. Everything back in the totes and back to the shelf. Life will take care of them somehow, sometime. Sorry kids, it’s your problem, now.

            *Yes. Repeated for emphasis. Please get the point.

            **Not really. But it should be.

***Really a ceramic jar, but it was mistranslated early on and the mistake stuck for all of eternity. Read the entire legend, it is a “theodicy”, “an explanation of why there is evil, suffering, and death in a world that might otherwise be prefect.”