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| Albert and Rita Archambeault, circa 1922, when my uncle was 1 year old and my mother was 2. |
My late mother, Rita, who died at 91 in December 2010, kept a spotless house in my hometown of Southbridge, Massachusetts. So it has been something of a surprise to discover, tucked away in the attic, the basement, and various nooks and crannies, countless items showing that she held on to virtually everything that ever found its way into her life.
Canceled checks from the 1970s, bookkeeping ledgers from the 1960s, a scrapbook of greeting cards that look like they date from the 1950s, copies of tax returns from the 1940s - mom saved them all.
My mother wasn’t a hoarder in the stereotypical sense. There were no tettering piles of paper in the kitchen, no bags of junk in the living room. Far from it. The place always was immaculate and uncluttered. Even the bundles of stuff that she stored in the attic were neatly filed in envelopes, boxes and drawers.
But the sheer volume of it all is so great that sifting through it has been both time-consuming and exhausting, as my family tries to get rid of what isn’t worth saving, without accidentally tossing what is. Whenever that task seems like it’s about to overwhelm me, though, I stumble upon some jewel that makes me grateful for my mother’s obsessive ways.
During one sweep, for example, my wife Liz found a cache of photos of my late father, Leonide, taken while he was serving in the military police during World War Two, as well as a photo of my father and his two younger brothers, Raymond and Arbel, when they were mere boys. We turned up several very old record albums, and a baby picture of my mother and her brother, Albert, when they were 2 and 1, respectively.
There's a photo of my paternal grandfather, William Carrière, as a young man. And we found a heartbreaking picture of my maternal grandmother as a toddler. An only child, she's seated beside her stern-looking father, Edouard Laliberté, whose wife Amelina had died in childbirth. One box contained the 1918 marriage certificate, written in French, of my maternal grandparents, Wilbrod Archambeault and Albertine Laliberté, who were born, raised and married in Québec.
And that’s in addition to the letters that my mother wrote to her fiancé, some in French but most in English, back when the man who would later become my father was overseas during World War Two. Dad apparently saved them and brought them home with him at war’s end. Mom carefully tucked them away in a green Manhattan shirt box, then stored them in her own mini-Smithsonian: the attic.
Those letters turned up shortly after mom died. A year or two later, my brother Dave made another heart-stopping discovery when he found a stack of wartime letters from our father to our mother, as well as letters to mom from her brother Albert while he was stationed in Europe during the war. All carefully preserved in the single-family home where Dave and I grew up.
Thanks for meticulously creating such a comprehensive archive of your long and very full life, Mom. Sorting it out is a lot of work, but we’re more than willing to comb through it all. Because amid the car-repair receipts, old highway maps, outdated travel brochures and clippings of your friends’ obituaries, I’m sure you’ve hidden yet another gem - or two, or three, or 20 - just waiting to be unearthed.
Canceled checks from the 1970s, bookkeeping ledgers from the 1960s, a scrapbook of greeting cards that look like they date from the 1950s, copies of tax returns from the 1940s - mom saved them all.
My mother wasn’t a hoarder in the stereotypical sense. There were no tettering piles of paper in the kitchen, no bags of junk in the living room. Far from it. The place always was immaculate and uncluttered. Even the bundles of stuff that she stored in the attic were neatly filed in envelopes, boxes and drawers.
But the sheer volume of it all is so great that sifting through it has been both time-consuming and exhausting, as my family tries to get rid of what isn’t worth saving, without accidentally tossing what is. Whenever that task seems like it’s about to overwhelm me, though, I stumble upon some jewel that makes me grateful for my mother’s obsessive ways.
During one sweep, for example, my wife Liz found a cache of photos of my late father, Leonide, taken while he was serving in the military police during World War Two, as well as a photo of my father and his two younger brothers, Raymond and Arbel, when they were mere boys. We turned up several very old record albums, and a baby picture of my mother and her brother, Albert, when they were 2 and 1, respectively.
There's a photo of my paternal grandfather, William Carrière, as a young man. And we found a heartbreaking picture of my maternal grandmother as a toddler. An only child, she's seated beside her stern-looking father, Edouard Laliberté, whose wife Amelina had died in childbirth. One box contained the 1918 marriage certificate, written in French, of my maternal grandparents, Wilbrod Archambeault and Albertine Laliberté, who were born, raised and married in Québec.
And that’s in addition to the letters that my mother wrote to her fiancé, some in French but most in English, back when the man who would later become my father was overseas during World War Two. Dad apparently saved them and brought them home with him at war’s end. Mom carefully tucked them away in a green Manhattan shirt box, then stored them in her own mini-Smithsonian: the attic.
Those letters turned up shortly after mom died. A year or two later, my brother Dave made another heart-stopping discovery when he found a stack of wartime letters from our father to our mother, as well as letters to mom from her brother Albert while he was stationed in Europe during the war. All carefully preserved in the single-family home where Dave and I grew up.
Thanks for meticulously creating such a comprehensive archive of your long and very full life, Mom. Sorting it out is a lot of work, but we’re more than willing to comb through it all. Because amid the car-repair receipts, old highway maps, outdated travel brochures and clippings of your friends’ obituaries, I’m sure you’ve hidden yet another gem - or two, or three, or 20 - just waiting to be unearthed.
