In her last decade of life, my mother spent many pleasant hours at her single pedestal oak roll-top desk. When Mom took a seat there to write a note or read a letter, she looked like the Queen doing her correspondence. Some of her favourite things lay at her fingertips. I still have cards and notes she penned there. “Her little empire,” my brother called the antique reproduction.
Mom asked me several times if I would take the desk when she “didn’t need it anymore.” She seemed to think that the writer in the family should have it. But we lived two provinces away. Though its many nooks and crannies enchanted me, and I especially liked how the hood covered clutter, I knew the distance between us dictated a refusal.
During a phone call, only months before she died at 95, Mom asked again. “Would you like to have my desk, Kathleen?”
“Oh, Mom. I love your desk. But how would we get it over the mountains?”
She sighed. “Well, no one else wants it, either.” It bothered her that something so special to her may leave the family.
When my parents moved into a nursing home, my sister Beverly, while clearing out their apartment, called to ask about the desk herself. I would have refused again, but the Preacher nudged me. “Say yes, Hon. We’ll find a way to get it home.”
Only weeks later, Mom had a heart attack and a stroke. I flew to be with her for her final time on earth. Three unforgettable days, girding soul and spirit for an eternal journey – hers to make, our family’s to farewell.
“I’ll take your desk, Mom,” I said one afternoon, during one of our final conversations.
She smiled. “That’s GOOD.”
I had peeked inside the desk often on my visits. Mom had filled its many compartments with pretty things: fancy boxes, favourite cards for and from others, delicate stationery, wee ornaments, calligraphy markers, flower stickers, even serviettes she liked (a few lightly used).
“Beverly cleared it out already,” I said. “Now she knows your secrets.”
Mom giggled. Spread her empty hands. “I have no secrets.”
Before I left one evening, I bent to kiss her cheek. “I’ll see you in the morning,” I said, squeezing her hand. But by morning, she had slipped away, postponing our reunion until either Jesus returns or I follow her.
Eight months later, the desk rode safely over the mountains. We put it in my office, but without Mom’s pretty things it looked lonely. A gorgeous hunk of wood, I thought, dusting its drawers. Just… hollow. Nothing to remind me of her.
That’s when I found the tiny irregularly-shaped scrap of white paper. I prepared to toss it, but flipped it over instead. An exquisite pink rose sticker lay in my palm. Her favourite flower, her favourite colour. A gift from the Queen.
The sticker stayed. Every time I see it, I thank God... and hear her voice. “That’s good…”
