…and I can’t let it go
Many people think that as soon as possible after a loved one’s death, it is necessary to get rid of their clothing and person effects. Some people may find it easier to “move on” by donating their spouse’s clothes, or getting rid of their various hobbies, or tools. Not so fast. While it may be necessary if you are planning to downsize or relocate, this decision is purely yours. If people want to help, that is purely your decision too. Do not let anyone press you.
The first time I came home after my hubby’s death, a young friend came with me. She had been with me when he died, and taken me to her house afterward and let me sleep. She fed me a good omelet for breakfast and then drove behind me through DC and through Arlington, through Fairfax and through the Manassas battlefield, down through Prince William and Fauquier counties, until I was finally home.
The aluminum temporary ramp led up the outside steps. Inside, the leased hospital bed, now empty, was in the sunroom. The wheelchair sat where it had sat since the last time I transferred Moe from the breakfast counter to his easy chair, almost a week before.
I had it down to a science. Wrap my arms around his warm chest. He seemed to be getting taller, so I couldn’t get a good grasp on him under his arms, which probably would have helped with leverage. Tell him to try hard to think about shifting his weight to help me. Place my leg against his, lift, and pivot. He tried as hard as he could, but his feet were not leaving the ground. 183 pounds, then 179, then 174, over the past few months. Somehow, I managed to set him down softly, every single time. He loved his small recliner. I can nap in it, with my rescue cat, even now.
The walker was in the “man cave,” along with some supplies, because he had not needed it for weeks. The last attempt at physical therapy had been a fail.
Together Mara and I pushed the no-longer-needed equipment and supplies onto the porch. The bed would need to be returned to the hospital supply, and the walker was borrowed from hospice, but the rest would be donated. This “stuff” was not really Moe’s. It was a rude reminder of a disease process that insulted him. For this homecoming, I wanted it out of our sight and out of our life. But his life was gone and only mine was left.
The burial was in my small hometown in Pennsylvania, and my sister and her husband came to fetch me and do the driving. Moe’s body was being driven by my home town funeral director. We buried him on the most beautiful day of Autumn imaginable. It was October 28th. I just looked at the calendar. It still hurts to see that week.
My sister stayed with me for two weeks after the burial, and helped me with guests and a small memorial we had for the people who had not been able to go to Pennsylvania. We shared memories, had some readings, prayed, and sang a little. The fire roared in the living room, and the guests sat throughout the sunroom, dining room, and living room. I think there were about twenty people, and many other people sent flowers and comforting wishes.
After she left, and the house was quiet and tidy and winter was falling, I went into the garage where we kept a shelf of “outdoor shoes.” What a personal thing shoes are! There were his old hiking boots, and the new hiking boots he had bought before we went to China. There were his basketball shoes, and his dress shoes in browns and blacks.
There was, also, last pair of slip-on sneakers we had bought at Walmart, two sizes bigger than usual because his feet were swelling. He had bravely waited, sitting on the try-on bench, while I looked and looked and looked, because the shoes didn’t seem to be in any particular order. We also bought a tall metal shoe horn and some low-rise socks. I could tell he was so relieved to have a pair he could wear, because he would have soon had no choice but to go shoeless.
All those shoes I gathered up, and carried upstairs to his closet. We normally don’t keep shoes in the house. But these shoes were now sacred. They were not for prying eyes, or spiders or garage beetles. He wasn’t going to polish them anymore, or stuff them with newspaper to keep their shape. He was gone, but he didn’t take his shoes with him.
Over the course of that winter, I developed pneumonia and I rested a lot. I looked in his filing cabinet for documents I needed to transfer the property and accounts. I saw things he had carefully kept from even before we knew each other. Family documents, a picture or two of his first wife, another woman or girl I didn’t recognize, letters in his brother’s handwriting. When I found what I needed, I closed the cabinet and didn’t open it again for a long time.
I put his medical records in some kind of order. I made sure I had all the tax documents from the past seven years.
When I had closed up the shop, I had hauled his shop’s records into his home office. His desk implements, dozens of pens and highlighters, thousands of paper clips, audio cassettes of the ads we used to run on the classical radio station. The cash register, for which I have never found a key. His various pocket organizers, appointment books, portfolios, and samples. Someday I, or someone else after me, would have to sort through all this and it would be discarded. But not now.
I found little notes that he had written to me during the day. “I took my medicine.” “Do the taxes.” Ordinarily, they would have been tossed out as scraps of paper. Now, with his precious handwriting on them and the thoughts behind them, they were icons. I could not throw them away, because tomorrow I would not wake to find another one.
