The Closet revisited.....

I have been cleaning out our closet. Well, my closet.

I posted about this endeavor months ago....so now I am trying again.

His clothes have hung there for over 8 months, undisturbed, except for the occasional t-shirt, sweatshirt or flannel shirt I'll pull out and wear around.

I've begun to go through them. One by one, I pull them down , look at them, and make a decision in my mind for them to go in one of three places - stay, go to consignment, or go to the Salvation Army. Many of them trigger nothing inside me, just a random look at the label or a fleeting thought of where they were purchased.

So many of them trigger so much more. Raw emotion. Smiles, tears, and a few , something so gut-wrenching I have to stop, turn off the lights and leave for awhile. One particular night brought a string of some so powerful I just laid down in the closet and cried.

I try to tell myself that they are just clothes, threads of materials intertwined together in some factory far away by people we don't know. But they're not. They are memories. They are pieces of him that I can hold onto, sleep in, cry in and try to smell what may be left of his scent in.

The time before this was just a trial run, this time I'm really doing it. I've made Patrick's old bedroom Fashion Row, if you will. There are laundry hampers and two racks in there, endless hangers, and a notepad where I record what goes where and when. Dress clothes, suits, shorts, jeans, ties, hats, shoes.

Then there's a corner of our closet that has the things I'll never part with....
the shirt he wore when we eloped, the shirt he wore at our unofficial vow renewal in NOLA, and other items that mean things to us. Throw in a few hats, some hoodies and his leather jacket and I've still got a little to hold onto.

And a little of something is better than a lot of nothing.