One more job done

This weekend I knew I was going to tackle one of the bigger jobs left to do from this summer. My dad was very aggressive in wanting us to take care of my mom's clothes this summer. He wanted certain things taken care of asap and while we didn't understand his request and couldn't bear the thought of doing it we did do it for him. To a certain point. We cleaned out clothes from the laundry room and their bedroom. Bags and bags of clothing. And more bags. And then it got to a point. We couldn't do it any more and get things going for Kate's wedding. So we tucked them away in an unused bedroom.

My mom had clothes. More clothes than one woman. She had the clothes of ten people. So many clothes. This summer we got rid of most of the recent stuff, stuff we remember her wearing. Things that held recent memories. Or so we thought.

On Saturday I decided to tackle the rest of it with Melissa's help. I was not in a good place emotionally but I decided that sinking further would hopefully not happen, maybe it would be a good thing to touch something tangible of my mom's. Try to smell a whiff of perfume and talk about some good memories. I did catch myself smelling clothes. What a joke....those things had been stuffed in an unused room for months. They smelt like nothing but stale unused clothing. And I laughed when I caught myself trying to smell them. Ridiculous.

Three items out of a couple hundred hit us, or specifically me, hard this time. One was a Kenny Chesney concert t-shirt. My mom loved going to that concert with my dad and her sisters and their spouses. A fun night out for all of them. She had a blast. I wasn't part of that outing but I know she had a good time. So it was nice for me to remember that for her. Another was an Avon district manager shirt. Avon was such a big part of who she was for years. She worked hard for them and that shirt reminded me of that.

The last item was a simple, cheap t-shirt from Wal-mart. Striped and blue. Except that I have the same shirt in orange and Melissa has it in green. We all bought those shirts one summer, un-beknownst to the other two, and showed up at the campground wearing them together. Unplanned. Unintentional. Just two daughters and their mother dressing alike. Out of the blue.

I had forgotten about those shirts. But seeing my mom's brought me to tears. I stifled the tears and looked at Melissa as she stifled hers. We set it aside and kept it. For what I don't know, but it didn't get added to the donation pile.

We decided to start a small tote of things that we can't part with but aren't needing/wanting to look at daily. Things that don't have a place to call home. Things that no one wants but no one wants to throw away. And when we go over there and we want we can look through the box. Or we can just know it is there.

Oh how I wish I wasn't boxing things up. For the first time last week I let myself think the one thing that I hadn't thought all along. What if she didn't die in May. What would we be doing if she was here.

I sure as hell wouldn't be boxing up her clothes. Going through her memories. Sifting through pieces of her life.