andy's flannel

From where I lay in the bed I can see Andy's side of the closet.  His flannels lined up side by side on hangers, the well worn ones toward the front, the "good" ones toward the back. I can see the shelves above the hangers where his jeans, t-shirts and wool sweaters are stacked.  Much of it is exactly how he left it.  Or so I tell myself.  Certainly the clothes on the bottom of the stacks were folded and put there by him.  The clothes on the top of the stacks may have been washed, folded and placed there by me, or any number of friends and family doing our chores in his final month.  Which peice of clothing was he last able to put on (or away) for himself?  Which was the last shirt he hung on a hanger?  These questions haunt me, among so many of their kind (what was the last meal he cooked for us, when was the last time he drove the car, when was the last time he brushed his teeth, when was the last time he fed the dog).  Maybe they haunt me because they are so mundane.  They are things that we don't keep track of, assuming they are not finite.  If only I had written it all down, I'd remember the last time he built a fire in the woodstove.  But I didn't and I don't.

Sometimes I just stand in the closet and bury my head in his clothes.  They don't really smell like him anymore.  But there is something so raw and vivid about those shirts that he wore time and time again.  It's hard to believe he left all this behind.  How could it all still be here when he is gone?  I can envision him so easily in that worn purple "eat more kale" t-shirt, I can still feel the curve of his shoulders beneath it's soft fabric.  If I stand there long enough won't his body reassemble itself back into these clothes?

The girls pull out old favorites and wear them to bed.  I hardly ever do that, though his old tattered brown Carhart jacket is something I wish I could never take off.  Its weight wrapped over me as I walk to the barn is comforting.  I stick my thumb through the worn holes at the wrist and know his thumb was there too.  I finger the nails, screws and bits of hay in the pockets and feel his sense of loyalty to this place he loved to care for.

I think if I could, I might leave his closet like this forever.  But people ask, and I ask myself.  "Have you gone through his clothes yet?"  It's a big line in the shifting sand of grief.  What happens when I step over it?

Turns out, not a lot. The the girls and I went through his closet a couple weeks ago.  They had such fun doing it.  They laughed and poked fun at their dad for all his stained and put-away-dirty work clothes. They remembered stories of where things came from, how he loved this and hated that ("mom, why did you even buy that for him?"). They were eager to give his things to people we love.  Almost everything that we didn't keep for ourselves (and in the end we kept only a small stack of beloved shirts) we sorted into piles that the girls identified.  Uncle Chuck, Nicholas, DL...
They would hold each piece up and seemed to know right away who would want it. They were so generous with his things.  I stood back in wonder, choking back tears.  They reminded me: "mom, he wasn't attached to his clothes".  So true.

Last week while the girls were at school I painted the inside of the closet a sunny brown (the color of coffee with lots of cream).  I plan to paint my whole room this color when time permits.  The girls came home from school and soothed any doubts in my mind about the change.  "Mom it looks so great.  I love it!".  I put my things back in and left his side empty aside from a couple of his wool shirts that I plan to wear.  Soon we'll move my sewing supplies into his side of the closet to make room for Iris' eventual move to the atttic loft.

He's been gone almost nine months.  Enough time to grow a baby.  Which we did together, twice.  There is no way to even fathom the change that comes with birth and death.  How common and how huge.  How the experience changes you forever.

He'd be proud of us for letting go of his things. He was committed to experiencing this moment now.  And this moment now is for moving foward wrapped in the comfort of a few of his old flannels.