inherited

The antique silver tea service has found a place in our dining room, upon a vintage table cloth covering the credenza that is filled with glassware, serving bowls, and small figurines of angels and old-fashioned Christmas carolers. On the wall above it is a mirror with a large leaf and vine border. Hanging over the table is a rather spectacular crystal chandelier; near the window, an antique wooden plant stand. Though each of these fine quality pieces are different, they all have one thing in common: they are inherited.

The dining room table and hutch were wedding gifts as are the china, silver platters and almost all of the rest of its contents. I did get to be the one who picked out the dining room set, along with the china, over a couple of decades ago, and yet the individual style of these items somehow gets overshadowed by my mother-in-law's many other items reflecting her unique personal taste which was quite different from my own.

Walking into the front room, one's eyes are drawn to the variety of candlesticks gracing the top of an antique piano. The candlesticks, heavy and sharp enough to ward off an intruder, were inherited; the piano, which happens to be a rare antique that would be valuable if refurbished, was given by a man who bought a house with a piano left behind in it. Above the piano is a large mirror with an ornate border that looks like it goes with the piano. On one side of our couch, one of the few pieces of furniture we actually went into a store and purchased for ourselves, is a beautiful wooden end table with a brass lamp on top. The coordinating piece holds our stereo. A couple of trunks, one we got at an auction holds collectibles, many that are also inherited--from my mother; the other is a trunk I've had since childhood that continues to hold bits and pieces of my life. The last time it was opened my moldy wedding bouquet that I never throw away was right next to my high school portrait that my mother insists I hang up. I never do.

There is a framed print above the couch that we saw in a black and white photo of my husband and his mother when he was her only child. That was how he knew he had seen it first when it came time to divide up her belongings. That and the rose chair that used to set in the corner of her bedroom he decided he would like to have; both of which were sent to us by his sister sometime after the estate was settled. We will never know if the chair was broken before it was shipped or if it got broken along the way. There had been so much breakage . . . along the way.

An appraisal was done to assess the value of my mother-in-law's most prized possessions. The plan was to divide them evenly among the three siblings. The problem was one of the siblings wanted to use the appraisal as a guide, the other wanted to choose according to what she desired to have, and the third was not able to use any of the items since he lived alone in a group home setting for those with mental illness. As the daughter-in-law and sister-in-law, my voice was eventually silenced and I had to stand by while my husband's hope was crushed as two men and a truck disappeared some of his inheritance into a storage unit the day before the distribution of goods was to occur. We would then be threatened with a lawsuit to turn over the family jewels, though in the end I got to keep the diamond wedding ring given to me by my husband since his mother had given it to him explaining that she received it from her husband who had received it from his mother. The lucky recipient of the third-generation diamond, I have often wondered how it could have more meaning to someone other than the bride who received it at the time.

In the midst of the family turmoil as attempts were made to divide up a household of memories, I wrote a letter and suggested we sit down as a family to have a discussion before the communication that was already tenuous at best had completely ceased. My letter was ignored and I was figuratively shown the door. Five years later an email to cover over everything that had occurred, without doing the work of reconciliation, was not the restorative balm it may have been intended to be. Other packages would arrive randomly through the years, containing what was left of a woman's life that had been reduced to stuff to be divided between people who no longer called themselves a family.

Forgiveness had become a reality for me when I struggled to fight back in the midst of the intense battle and I had heard the still, small voice in my heart tell me that what I needed to do was to admit that the money was not mine. Barely providing for our family at that point, I was not eager to receive this news. But God is faithful. He did not hesitate to remind me that the money did not belong to the other family member either. The money had always belonged to God, as everything ultimately does. It was at that moment I unclenched my fists and with upturned hands gave thanks to a God who provides. Soon after that, the settlement was finalized without a lawsuit. Each of the two households would be allotted a certain amount of family heirlooms. And reconciliation would continue to elude us all.

Recently my husband was contacted by his sister to alert him to the fact that she was again moving, had no more need of the silver tea service and wondered if he wanted it. He has wanted it for the past nine years. It arrived in two separate shipments; one large box containing the set itself along with pieces of china that match one of the sets we were given, and one containing only the very large, heavy silver tray. Unwrapping it was like taking the bandage off a wound. After this amount of time a wound should have completely healed. But it never really has.

I stare at the silver tea service while I drink my coffee, remembering what it looked like when we used to have dinner at my mother-in-law's home. We were never served tea from it and I was always nervous to have the boys, who were very young at the time, go anywhere near it or the rest of her precious belongings. Now that many of those items are in our home and our boys have grown into men, it is a different feeling. I cannot really put my finger on it, but it feels like more than just loss. It is the loss of what we had hoped would happen in that family while my mother-in-law and brother-in-law were still on this side of heaven. It is the hope anyone from a dysfunctional family has--the hope for more. More communication. More time to work out problems in a less intense way. More consideration for the personalities of all involved. More love.

The antique silver tea service has found a place in our dining room. Its cold beauty remains untarnished, unlike its family of origin. I do not know whether to put it back into a box or begin serving tea.