A VHS recording of my husband on The Price is Right. 

A 12-year-old unopened jar of apple butter.

Pictures, pictures, pictures of me as a smiling 6 year old, a smirking 13 year old and with my arms wrapped around my friends in high school.

They were all there waiting for me, in the storage bins in our basement.

And then I found this. What a pretty little jewelry box, I thought.

Except jewelry boxes don’t usually open on the bottom.

Or have little black velvet bags inside of them.

My first thought was – this looks illegal. My second thought was – why would someone bother to package up something like sand?

That’s when it hit me. This wasn’t someTHING. This was someONE. And I had no idea who I’d just pulled out of a storage bin. 

I don’t have the best memory. I remember the stuff I HAVE to remember. Pick up child at this time, go to meeting at this time, pack lunch, do work. A lot of the rest floats through my brain and right on out of it. I forget things like the faces and names of the new neighbors, or whether I went to high school or college with a friend on Facebook. 

So. Had I somehow forgotten a dead relative? 

A quick inventory of my side of the family revealed the locations of all living and deceased accounted for. That’s it, I thought, carefully putting aside Grandma Mamie or Great-grandpa Stanley or whoever was in the jewelry box. This is one of Bo’s relatives. Who has apparently been traveling with us in a Rubbermaid storage bin for an unknown length of time. 

I said a little rest-in-peace prayer, set Uncle Whoever on the Keep pile and went back to sorting photographs. 

When Bo got home, I tried to break the news gently. “I found something odd in the basement today,” I started, taking care to keep my voice calm. This could be very emotional for him, after all. Maybe he’d been lying awake at night for years, wondering where the remains of Dear Cousin Mystery could possibly be. 

Trying to keep a soft and supportive look on my face, I held out the jewelry box. 

“That’s Maynard,” he said. 

Of course it was. My sieve-like brain had forgotten the final resting box of our dear departed tuxedo cat, resting in peace since 2011. In my defense, technically I was right about the ashes belonging to someone on Bo’s side of the family tree, since Bo adopted him before we met. 

Maynard is now in a more dignified location on the downstairs shelf. 

And there is a more recently deceased animal in the bucket in our carport. 

What can I say? Finding May-May inspired us. We realized we love collecting dead animals. It’s our hobby now!

I’m kidding. I hope I’m kidding. 

See, the day after the Great Jewelry Box Ash Mystery, I mentioned to a (childless) acquaintance that my six year old wants to be a palentologist. He then immediately reeled off a hot tip on the location of a possum skeleton. 

The budding palentologist was at my elbow. I diverted quickly, quickly. But the damage was done. Later that evening, she casually asked when we were going to look for the possum skeleton. 

We went because I am the kind of mother who supports her child’s dreams. Also because I didn’t think we’d actually find the thing. 

Great news to any fellow budding bone collectors – turns out pandemic rubber gloves ALSO work great for carcass collecting. Stay tuned for part 2 – a rookie’s guide to bone cleaning!

Photo credits: me. Except for the fancy one, that’s all Alexander Krivitskiy for Unsplash.