Maggie Alderson: 'The day I dreaded for 25 years has finally come.'

Maggie Alderson is a much-loved writer, editor and author whose books include Mad About the Boy, Cents and Sensibility and Pants on Fire. Her latest novel, Secret Keeping For Beginners, was released this year. Maggie is best known in Australia for her incredibly popular, long-running style column in the Good Weekend, and now has her own website at maggiealderson.com. Maggie joins a stellar group of women as a regular contributor to Debrief Daily, musing on topics ranging from relationships to style. Enjoy.

I’ve been a bit of a wreck. But a happy wreck. Here’s why: for 25 years or more I have worried about the day I would have to clear my mother’s house after her death. I have dreaded it. Dreaded it.

Recently, my sister and I did that clearance – but my mum is still alive. She’s already moved from her four-bedroom house, downsizing to a beautiful apartment in a lovely retirement complex with beautiful views.

Which just goes to show what a total waste of time worrying is.

So I could have danced with joy that it wasn’t that awful scenario I’d dreaded, but I did still find it emotionally harrowing at times. It was funny the things which set me off. Coming across this orange plastic beaker did me in on the first morning, before my sister arrived.

It’s my mum’s old jam mug, which she used to transfer the hot jam from the big pan into the jars. Jams she made from fruit she grew in our garden. It was like a small freeholding with her fruit and vegetable patches, all stoked by a system of compost heaps I didn’t understand, but loved the smell of when I’d cycle past them on warm summer days.

Seeing the jam mug again, and knowing she will never make jam with it again, had me head down on the kitchen counter sobbing. It just seemed like the end of everything. The amazingly energetic woman my mum was in her prime.

But then I reminded myself that while she won’t make her own jam any more, she may well sit on a stool in my sister’s kitchen, 10 minutes from her new place, enjoying a cup of tea and watching her doing it.

The jam chain is unbroken.

Once my sister arrived at the house, I stopped sobbing and it became rather a joyous nostalgic romp, with lots of laughs and no explaining of any kind necessary.

It’s a very special bond when you go through what was the family tool kit with someone who knows every hammer and screwdriver as well as you do and with equal fondness.

I kept a small hammer which I remember my grandfather using, she kept his fold-out wooden rule.

Just about everything we picked up triggered memories. Finding a beach mat bought on a holiday in Spain in 1963. The ancient coffee jars my mum has used to store spices for about 50 years. The smell of all the LPs was like a Proustian time machine which shot me back to 1967.

As we went through it all – the shed was a bit a of a challenge – there was no tension of any kind between us, or with my brother Nick who we kept in text contact, about ‘who gets what’ – something else I had pointlessly dreaded.

We all had a few key things we wanted/needed (I’m thrilled to have the Magimix, because mine is busted) and the rest of it just naturally divided up.

I was very happy with the system we quickly named KIF, short for ‘better to keep it in the family’, by which anything we couldn’t bear to part with, but didn’t actually need, was designated to go and reside in one of my sister’s outbuildings. At least we’d know it was there.

But I must admit I was very happy that there one particular thing no one else had particular ambitions to take home: my father’s bowler hat.

I remember him so clearly telling me about the day he bought it and how, after measuring his very large head, the man in Lock & Co had to go deep into the back of the building to find one big enough, dust wafting off it as he returned.

‘We don’t get a lot of call for this size, sir,’ he’d said.

I picture it rather like the wand shop scene from Harry Potter and it means the world to me to have that hat, in its wonderful box, safe at home with me.

This post originally appeared on Maggie's website and was republished here with full permission. You can buy Maggie's books here and here.

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