Another Step

Last autumn, I went through Significant Other’s clothes and basically divided them into two; items I could part with – typically things that he hardly ever, or never wore – and items I wasn’t ready to part with. I ended up with a wardrobe full of clothes, and there they’ve hung for the last year.

Over the last couple of months, I’ve been gearing myself up to sort through that wardrobe. Over the last few weeks I’ve woken and wondered whether I’d do it that day. Each day, I felt I couldn’t, but I could also sense the day coming closer.

Yesterday morning when I woke up, I knew.

It was time.

I opened the wardrobe doors, then knowing what I was about to do, nearly closed them again, almost, but not quite, panicking:

I can’t do this.

Why do I have to do this?

I shouldn’t be doing this.

I’m not ready.

Maybe he’ll be back.

No, he’s not coming back.

This is too hard.

I’ll do it another day.

Wait.

You can do this.

I started taking clothes off hangers, checking pockets as I did so, folding them, putting them into piles ready to be bagged up, or thrown away.

Memories associated with some of those clothes hit me:-

The clothes he wore when working on cars.

A garish shirt he used to wear for a laugh at family barbecues.

A belt I had to buy at the last minute, because he’d forgotten to pack his usual one for a wedding we attended a few hundred miles away from home, and his trousers were in real danger of pooling around his knees.

As I gradually emptied the wardrobe, every now and again I thought I caught a faint whiff of him.

Or was that wishful thinking?

I also made a separate very small pile, comprised of items I want to keep.

When I was done, I loaded the bags into my car and drove to the Cancer Research UK charity shop. Walking away from there afterwards was damn hard. Getting home and seeing the empty wardrobe almost made me want to run back to the shop and get his things back.

Parting with such personal possessions is now another step I’ve taken – it’s not bravery, it’s part of ‘letting go’ (a term I personally don’t like, but I appreciate the meaning). A process many before me the world over have taken, and many more will undertake.

Yet for each person, it’s such an individual step, done at a time when you think you feel strong enough to deal with the onslaught of emotions again. It is difficult, if not almost impossible, to bag up aspects of a loved one’s life, remove them from the house and not feel that overwhelming sense of loss all over again.

I don’t need his clothes in the wardrobe to remember him by; however it was comfortable knowing they were there.

But sometimes the easy thing to do isn’t always the right thing to do.