The box was tucked into a dark corner of the attic, overhung with cobwebs. I peered at it in the beam of my flashlight. My mother's unmistakable lettering pronounced its contents on every side: WORK IN PROCESS. She had always labeled boxes on every side so when the family moved, there was no mistaking what would be found in each box and it would be clearly visible no matter how or where it had been stored. Some of those boxes had been used and reused for close to twenty years. This box, however, seemed not to have been reused. I looked at the tape which sealed it shut and my heart beat a little faster. The box appeared to contain whatever my mother had originally put in it and labled so carefully.

     I pulled the box from its cobweb shroud and blew off the dust covering its top before I backed out of the attic dragging it with me. When I got it into the house, I ran my hand over the printing as if I could devine something of my mother from the letters. Beneath the main label she had printed: Inc Sarah's Coat. I smiled thinking how my mother always had made lists to remind herself of everything. I had found them in all sorts of places. She had handed down a family saying: If it's not on the calendar, it doesn't exist. Period.

     I had only vague memories of my mother who was killed in an auto accident before I was four. Photos of her kept her fresh in my memory but she would never get older. Sarah, my oldest sister would be as old as my mother before too many more years. It's an odd sort of feeling when your mother remains in perpetual middle-age. I could remember beging plagued with bad dreams the year I was three and no matter how quietly I crept to my mother and father's room, she would be waiting with the blankets lifted for me to crawl in. I would hold her long brown hair in my fingers and "worry" it back and forth, like a security blanket. I always wanted brown hair like that but, like the rest of my sisters, I had acquired my father's blond hair. The boys had inherited the brown hair and eyes of my mother.

     I was both eager and reluctant to open the box. I felt like I was intruding in someone's private affairs like looking through a purse or a diary or someone else's lingerie drawer. But my mother was gone and I was curious to know what her "work in process" had been. Each time our family had moved, she and my older sisers had thrown out everything they could. I wondered how this box had remained untouched for all these years and what my mother had considered important enough to keep even though it was unfinished. I used the tip of a pair of scissors to slit the wide cellophane tape now yellowed with age.

     I lifted out a coat pattern and pieces of wool, some already basted together. The lining, interfacing, buttons and thread were all carefully folded together. This, obviously had been "Sarah's Coat." Beneath the coat I found a beautiful black and white dress smocked across the front with golden-haired angels with red hair ribbons. The dress was about a size four. This was my dress. I knew without a doubt that this was to have been my Christmas dress all those long years ago if my mother had lived to finish it. I carefully inspected the beautiful workmanship and tiny, intricate and perfectly formed stitches. I could finish this dress for my niece. Maybe. I laid the dress carefully on the bed next to me and looked into the box.

     There was a tapestry vest with goats which looked like a style my sister Karen would have worn. Two whimsical ties and a vest had obviously been meant for my brothers. All of these things (except the coat) needed only handwork to be finished. These would have completed the Christmas which no one could remember. Gifts had been purchased and exchanged, but without my mother Christmas had not happened that year. I had received a doll from Santa which I never touched. I refused to let go of the doll my mother had made for me before I was two. I wore off it's face the year following my mother's death and refused to let even my sister re-sew it. I remembered Meg's face, too, from photographs of her first two years.

     Tenderly I laid aside each of these expressions of my mother's love. The bottom of the box yielded some of her writing. Most of what she wrote, she wrote at the computer so I was surprised to pull from the box pages of her beautiful handwriting on yellow, legal-pad paper. There were obviously poems. There were stories several pages long and also ones less than a page. There were what appeared to be essays. Why had my mother not put these on her disks with all the rest of what she had written . . . her legacy to us, her children?

     I leafed through the writings and discovered that most of these were deeply personal and often troubled. My mother had tucked away her troubles as "work in process." The stories which she wrote for us were untroubled, funny, uplifting. They bound us together as a family and helped us to focus on the the love we shared. They provided us with roots and a way of laughing at ourselves. They let us laugh at our mother who was, admittedly, a lousy housekeeper, and our father who had a more explosive personality. Her stories and poems had helped us over all the rough spots life provides. They had also provided me with an unrealistic view of my mother.

     As I looked at the unfinished business of her life I saw that the love was unfinished . . . and continued to this day. I still knew without a doubt how much she had loved each of us. I also saw that her own conflicts were unfinished business until such a time as she could resolve them. The resolution became the basis for the stories and poems she had shared with us and everyone else. Her writing was the substance of sanity. It was a reaffirmation of humor. It showed us how life was good.

     I set aside her writing. Someday I would read each one . . . but not now. Someday, when I had plenty of time to meet my mother and share her trials and her pains, I would study each unfinished piece of work. Today, though, I was not yet ready to think of my mother as less then perfect. As less than the always cheerful, encouraging and accepting person that my mind had created. My relationship with my mother was unfinished. Perhaps I had stumbled across this box because now I was old enough to know my mother as a human being instead of a figment of a child's imagination.

     Carefully I returned each blue-lined, business-like page filled with the beautiful, fluid writing to the bottom of the box. This box was now my unfinished business, my treasure which I would cherish. When I was ready to finish it, I would share its contents with my brothers and sisters who already knew my mother as an imperfect human being. I knew that the things my mother had left unfinished would complete who she was for me and help me to gain perspective for my own life. I realized for the first time that a strong relationship is based not just on good times, but on sharing the bad times as well and learning to deal with them. Sometimes, unfinished business is perhaps the best business of all.