With More Love from Ellen

My mother-in-law Ellen died five years ago this coming Saturday. She died in this house with her oldest child, who is now my husband, present. In one of those random moments of achingly beautiful symmetry in the universe, Ellen departed life with her son close by on the same day that fifty years earlier she had brought him into this world.

My husband and I moved into this house last October. His parents had built it in 1964 and lived in it until their deaths five weeks apart. For him, it was a homecoming after a long and rancorous divorce that had driven him away two years earlier. For me, it was the first time I'd been here 1974. The house was in shambles, but everyone who stepped into it in those early, ugly weeks agreed that it had "good bones," and, more important, a "good feel" to it.

I'd like to ascribe the good feel to us and our close relationship. We are, I hope, a huge part of the positive spirit that now permeates the house. I also know, in my heart of hearts, that Ellen has her hand in the whole matter.

Her touch is everywhere. Many of the household goods came from my husband's parents. The upstairs linen closet holds some of her tablecloths, which I now use; the downstairs one a housedress of hers which my husband cannot bring himself to discard. Her letters, her journals, and decades of photos are stacked in boxes. When I bake, I use some of the same mixing bowls she used for over fifty years.

Her cookbooks are still on the shelf with an earnest cook's notes in the margins. Her 1943 edition of The Joy of Cooking is worn; her 1946 edition of The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book (Fannie Farmer) is not only worn but marked with the dates she tried different recipes as well as her editorial comments. My favorite is her note about the Lemon Meringue Pie on page 644, which she made on August 1, 1956: "a terrible amount of work--result not too good." For good measure, Ellen added "don't repeat."

Shortly after we moved in, I often had a sense of someone being nearby, even when I was the only one in the house. It was a warm presence, not an ominous one. When I finally mentioned it to my husband, he got a curious look on his face.

"How do you mean?"

"I don't know. Just a feeling of someone standing near me. Why?"

It turned out that he too had sensed someone else's presence, but had not yet said anything aloud.

A few weeks later I noticed that the parfait glasses on the top buffet shelf began to be rearranged. Certain glasses were moved forward, others pushed back. I would rearrange them and the next day they would be in a different pattern again. Vibrations of the house as we walked through? They moved even when we were gone for a few days.

I mentioned this to my husband as well. This time he didn't hesitate to respond.

"Do you think it's Mom?"

If Ellen continues to inhabit this house, and I think she does, she is the gentlest of spirits. As we put the house back to rights, both of us have a sense of her being drawn back to the warmth that now fills the rooms. I would like to think she is pleased with the household atmosphere now: the cooperation, the sharing, the love. It is what she always wanted for her older son and was saddened that he never quite found it in his earlier years.

The room in which Ellen died after spending the last months of her life is now a combined study and reading room. I do all of my writing and much of my work on a table in one corner. It is a peaceful room and one to which we often retire at day's end to share a cup of tea and our respective days and thoughts.

I imagine Ellen smiling as she listens in, with much love.