STASHING CASH

It’s a laughing matter now but my mother and mother-in-law had the same mindset. They each went to their death with cash stashed under their mattresses. While we no longer recall the exact amounts, neither of our mothers could have bought much with their pocket change collections.

My Aunt Fannie, born in 1918, the same year as my mother-in-law, chose less obvious hiding spots to store her jewelry and such. She bragged to us about those hideaways she learned from co-workers who lived in high-crime neighborhoods.

Does anyone know the one where valuables are sewn into the hem of the drapes? What a hassle every time you want to wear your favorite jewelry. 

Then there’s the story of the ice cube trays. Remember those relics before the popularity of refrigerators with built-in ice makers? Mistakenly, Aunt Fannie not only stored rings, but she froze my grandfather’s pocket watch. That was a surefire way to ruin the mechanism. Oops.

Those random thoughts carried us through a conversation my husband and I had. We thought about our mothers who didn’t die in the beds where their money was stashed.

My mother passed away one night at age 97 in a hospital bed she slept on in her living room. That bed was conveniently on the first floor of her single-family house and the money was under her mattress on the second floor, in the room where, years earlier, she slept with my father. I wonder if he knew about that “bank account.”

As for my mother-in-law’s case, at age 78, she left the hard-earned cash under her mattress at her house when along with my father-in-law, she went to live in a home for the aged. Before that, she cared for him for about five years while he vegetated after a stroke and she began to decline.

While my mother-in-law lived on to age 88, she never returned to her house. My husband and I took the responsibility for cleaning out the contents. Probably, the first place I looked was under the mattress, almost jokingly, but the laugh was on me.

Although I had an inkling both mothers left money under their mattresses, finding it was revealing. Their depression mentality dragged on throughout their long lives. As Aunt Fannie suggested, they were saving for a rainy day. We’re sorry that they didn’t spend that loose change on themselves.