My sister slapped me at our mother’s graveside, and the funeral director stepped between us. She’d been drinking since the night before and waited until the last people were walking to their cars. I’d asked her one question, quietly: whether she’d taken Mom’s rings before the funeral home released her things. “You were never here. You don’t get to ask me anything,” she said. I was there nine days out of every fourteen for two years, and everyone standing in that grass knew it.
The director got his arm up in time to take most of it. He walked me to my car and didn’t say a word, which I appreciated more than anything anybody said that week. I assumed that was the end of it. Then he called me on Monday and said he’d gone through his file. There was something in it from my mother, and he thought I needed to see it. He asked me to come by before he released the rest of her personal effects.
He showed me a sealed envelope that had been placed in her file several months earlier. My name was written on the front, along with instructions that it was not to be given to my sister. Inside was a short note from Mom saying she’d noticed certain things disappearing from her room whenever my sister visited. She hadn’t confronted her because she wanted to be sure before accusing anyone. Then she listed three pieces of jewelry and the dates she’d last seen them. The last date was two weeks before she died.
The funeral director said there was one more thing. He had checked the inventory from the nursing home, and the rings had never been listed among my mother’s belongings when she arrived. My sister had apparently told the staff that Mom had already given them away. Then he handed me a second envelope, this one containing a photograph from the day Mom was admitted. In the photograph, my mother was wearing all three rings. On the back, Mom had written one sentence: “If these disappear, ask my daughter where she went the night she said she stayed home.”
