Setting that one aside, I picked up the second photo and looked at it, something I’d done countless times in my life. When I was a child, in fact, I would often lie here at night, waiting for Jake’s soft, even breathing from across the room before I would pull out my little flashlight and this picture of my mother. Then I would stare at it, sometimes in a vague way, sometimes sucking in every last detail, trying to memorize her beautiful face before it was gone from my recollection entirely.
The snapshot had been taken when she was about sixteen years old. In it, she was wearing Amish clothing and sitting on the top rail of the wooden fence that still fronted the pasture of her parents’ farm. She was looking off to the side, not just smiling but laughing, her face filled with delight. She’d shown me the photo herself, a year or so before she died, when she was trying to explain about the Amish clothing she’d worn back on the farm. I had wanted to keep it—not because of the clothes, but because such moments of glee were so rare for her. To my mind, she had almost always been somber, sometimes smiling a little but hardly ever lighting up like this with such joy.
I realized now how lucky I’d been to have a picture of her at all. The Amish frowned on photos for several reasons, mostly because they were seen as a graven image, something the Bible warned against. The fact that she’d allowed herself to be photographed while she was still living at home said a lot about her propensity to defy Amish convention.
Feeling an odd sadness, I returned both photos to the box and then picked up the only other memento of my mother it held, one that evoked a distinct memory. I’d been just six years old, watching cartoons in the living room one day, when I decided I wanted a snack. I called out to my mother but she didn’t answer, so I went to the kitchen to get something for myself.
That’s when I found her there, lying on the floor near the sink, unconscious.
I tried everything I could to wake her, first shouting out her name, then shaking her by the shoulders, then throwing a cup of cold water on her face, just like on TV. When none of that worked, I climbed up on a kitchen stool, grabbed the phone, and called the only number I knew by heart, that of my best friend and next-door neighbor.
While I waited for his parents to come over and help, I returned to my mother’s side, curling up on the floor next to her and trying to pull her lifeless arms around me. When that didn’t work, I decided to hold her hand—and that’s when I discovered in her right fist a small key, perhaps an inch long, that I didn’t recognize. At the time I’d slipped it into my pocket and returned my attention to interlacing her limp fingers with my own until help arrived.
It wasn’t until hours later, that night when my father finally picked me up from next door, brought me home, and made me get ready for bed even though my mother wasn’t there to tuck me in, that I discovered that key in the pocket of my jeans and remembered where I’d found it. Fearing my dad might take it away from me if he knew about it, I kept the key to myself and slept with it under my pillow.
Stuck at home with a sitter most of the next day, I spent much of the time going around the house and trying the key on various doorknobs, hoping to figure out what it unlocked. I had no luck, so finally I tucked it away in the cigar box for safekeeping until I could make sense of it. But I never did.
And as it turned out, that was the night my dad came home and gave me the news that mommy had gone far away and wasn’t ever coming back.
Holding the key in my hand now, I realized afresh that I would never know what it unlocked or why she’d been holding it when she died. The thought overwhelmed me with such grief that finally I put the key back in the box and put the box back in the drawer, where it belonged. My little stroll down memory lane had only made me feel more agitated and confused.
I decided to call Jake, who always knew how to cheer me up. Using the phone in the shop, I dialed the number for the bunkhouse and waited as someone retrieved him for me. As we talked, he surprised me by being positive about the task ahead of me. He said he’d always known I would have to come to terms with who I was before I could take my membership vows, and that he’d had a feeling I could only do that by making a trip into the outside world.
After our call, I squeezed in a quick trip to my aunt Sarah’s house, feeling the need to reassure her that history wasn’t repeating itself. Over coffee in the kitchen with her and Jonah, I assured them that if I chose not to return to the Amish life, I would do so in the light of day, with the full knowledge of my loved ones.
“I would never just disappear without warning,” I told her, looking into the eyes of my sweet aunt and offering her the most encouraging smile I could give.
I had hoped my words would bring her comfort, but instead they just sent her to her room in tears, leaving me there in the kitchen alone with my uncle Jonah.
“She’ll get through it in time,” he told me in his deep, gravelly voice, “just as she got through the loss of her sister.”