There’s nothing left for me
Of days that used to be
They’re just a memory
Among my souvenirs —”Among My Souvenirs,” Edgar Leslie
Source: Nati Melnychuk/Unsplash
About a year after Tom died, I took his toothbrush out of the holder in the bathroom.
And I put it in a drawer.
I’ll throw it out someday. Probably. Maybe.
It took a while longer before I was able to dispose of the all-but-empty Costco-size bottle of olive oil that was the last bottle of olive oil he’d bought. I did manage to actually throw that away—after I took a photo of it.
We don’t have them, but we still have their things, the things they touched. And these things, even the most mundane, hold tremendous power. Joan Didion wrote about this in The Year of Magical Thinking, her memoir of grief after her husband died:
I opened his closet and filled more bags: New Balance sneakers, all-weather shoes, Brooks Brothers shorts, bag after bag of socks. I took the bags to St. James’. One day a few weeks later I gathered up more bags and took them to John’s office, where he had kept his clothes. I was not yet prepared to address the suits and shirts and jackets but I thought I could handle what remained of the shoes, a start.
I stopped at the door to the room.
I could not give away the rest of his shoes.
I stood there for a moment, then realized why: he would need shoes if he was to return.
The recognition of this thought by no means eradicated the thought.
I have still not tried to determine (say, by giving away the shoes) if the thought has lost its power.
I didn’t imagine Tom would need his toothbrush again, but I still couldn’t move it. Seeing it conjured for me a cozy feeling: shuffling around before bed, warm and sleepy—I could practically feel him in the next room, in his blue-and-green flannel pajama bottoms.
Except, of course, the toothbrush was an equally powerful reminder that he was not in the next room, that he would never again be in the next room. And so the sight of the toothbrush warmed and broke my heart simultaneously. For a full year, moving it was unimaginable.
The power and the pain
I felt a little sillier about the olive oil, but really, just a little, because if that’s what I needed to do, that’s what I needed to do. (See: “Am I Crazy? No You’re Grieving.”) These things Tom touched held his essence for me in some strange way, or maybe they just helped focus the thoughts about him that waft through my mind every waking hour and some sleeping ones.
(Although I don’t dream about him often. I had a few dreams early on, but now they are very rare. In griefland, dreams of lost loved ones are major events that we meticulously parse for insights that might give us, if nothing else, a tiny new chapter—barely a sentence really—to add to a story that has ended.)
Such things hold surprising power. While looking for a shopping bag one day, I pulled one out from a local restaurant marked with Tom’s name for pickup. This reminder of one night of our many together (not that I remember which particular night) triggered a sad spiral that lasted days. He was here, he brought home dinner, he had a name in the world outside. This paper bag with a black magic marker scrawl told a story of love and life and dinner. I put the bag back with the others, where it will remain for the time being. Possibly forever. And that’s nobody’s business but mine.
These foolish things, as another song goes, represent a life together. They are not grand in meaning like wedding rings, photographs, love letters (not that those were Tom’s style), but they contain power in their very homeliness, concrete reminders of the small moments that weave two lives together.
Some people have teddy bears made of their loved ones’ clothing; I will have a quilt made of Tom’s T-shirts as soon as I can bear to cut them up. Right now, his closet is still full of his clothes, but someday I’ll empty it—except for things I can’t part with, many of which I wear. When I put on his overalls to do yardwork, I become a little bit of him, and I like the feeling. And while I got rid of some of his shoes, his day-to-day shoes still sit in the closet, ragged and worn out and shaped to his dear feet.
Meaning in the meaningless
In grief, we might search for signs and symbols and meanings in everything. I noticed that the expiration date on a container of parmesan cheese was the day he died, which meant both absolutely nothing (Tom hated cheese) and yet something. I kept that container of cheese until it was green. I was stopped in my tracks when I noticed that his truck inspection expired the month he died.
Am I crazy? One woman I know spent one of her last happy times with her mother getting pedicures. She left her pedicure on long past its expiration date, didn’t even cut her toenails, because they held the magic of that day with her mother.
It only sounds crazy if you have never grieved hard. Don’t listen to anyone who tells you “it’s time.” It’s only time when you’re ready. (For future reference, however, research suggests that photographing sentimental objects makes it easier to get rid of them. )
Letting go slowly
I gave some of Tom’s shirts to one of his brothers recently, and as I took them off the hangers, I thought about how Tom put them there, how he was the last one to touch them.
Everything I touch of his, everything I move, everything I give away, is another little good-bye. For now, I try to do this mindfully, selecting the people to whom I will pass things along.
Someday I’m sure I’ll be hauling bags to Goodwill. Someday I will clean out his closet. Someday I’ll sell his truck, which sits, not running, in my driveway, where I can lean against it sometimes and think of him. His wallet, glasses, and keys sit on his dresser and someday I’ll tuck them all in a drawer, out of sight.
But not yet.
I threw out the bottle of olive oil; that’s enough for now.