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A couple of times I asked a couple of different people if they would come down and help, but summer is crazy, life is busy, and our schedules just didn't match.
...so I did it alone.
...and it reminded me of a time I did the same job all alone some 7 years ago. It was on one of my many trips home that Mother asked me to help her clean out Daddy's room. She told me she had done some of it, but I saw little difference between that visit and my previous trip to Dodge.
I opened his closet and quickly understood why it was too much for her. His cologne still lingered there...drifting through the room like the dust caught in a ray of sunshine on a summer afternoon. It encircled me and the deeper I reached into his things the more I fell into his memories. His shirts, all crisply ironed, all facing the left, hanging there on the perfectly matched clothes hangers and ,just like when I grew up, the top button and third button down were each buttoned, proof of my mother's finger prints on my dad's clothes...because, as she taught me, "...they hang better and don't get that funny crease in the front"(I can hear her saying that as if she were standing right next to me, right now, head bent over the ironing board).
...and on the shelves above, a box of army letters, pictures of his childhood, a collection of cowboy hats and baseball caps, cassette tapes filled with his guitar music, a matchbook collection...all things that I could remember from my childhood...
...all of them looking back at me saying, "...he was here".
Mother left the room, she couldn't watch.
I gently pulled each of his shirts out and folded them, just as he would want...carefully.
...then I started on his dresser drawers, my hand rests on his pile of crisply ironed handkerchiefs. Handkerchiefs always close by to dry the tears of a 6 year old who has scraped her knee or to wipe the Kansas dust from his glasses after plowing the fields.
...and comes another memory, there was always a handkerchief hanging out his back pant's pocket, and then another memory, our little dog, Cuddies, that would run behind him and jump to grab it out of his pocket and my dad turning and laughing at the little pup with the big jump...and my dad sitting on the back porch, crying, when Cuddies was killed on the road...
...a shiny gold watch still in the box, along with a note in my handwriting, wishing him a happy birthday. Postcards from friends and family from all over, a funny one from me, postmarked in Colorado. The letter I wrote him when Mom(his mother, my grandmother, that we all called "Mom", the one we all cherished) died, telling him what I believed about where she was and who she was with. Golf tees, tie clasps, rings, a silver dollar, his Zippo cigarette lighter, a collection of Father's Day cards from grandchildren and Valentine's cards from my mother...and a picture of her not long after they were married, she's laughing...and she's beautiful...and it was his favorite.
...and I somehow felt like I was intruding, eavesdropping, trespassing on very private memories...and just as I feel like I should stop, I hear my mother in the other room...and I continue cleaning out the proof that he was here.
...and tonight I began the same process...cleaning out proof that she was here...this is hard.
But I'm the daughter, the one and only, and it's my job and I tell myself it's an honor, but it is still hard.
...and I wonder to myself, which of my daughters will do this for me someday? Will they do it together? Will they laugh at a memory of me wearing a skirt they all hated or will they smile at all the black and white in my wardrobe? Will they smell my perfume and remember with fondness my love of little glass bottles with heavenly smells inside?
...stop, I tell myself, focus, work, get this awful, beautiful job done.
...the job, I actually started this several weeks ago, but I didn't get very far. I kept telling myself I would wait for one of the girls to come help, but that just didn't work out...then I was determined to just get it done, even if I was alone. It's silly, I told myself, to let those nice clothes just hang there when there are people who could get good use out of them and I could use the space for other things. Time and again I would march into her room, determination on my face, ready to get the process started and completed.
"It will just take a few minutes", I told myself. But in the end I would open her closet or her drawers and she would be there in my memory, wearing that purple shirt or wrapping baby Lukee in her white sweater, and there is the suit she wore to Dani's wedding...and I would close the closet, safely keeping that memory hanging undisturbed until I had the courage to open it again.
...but tonight I swallowed the tears, faced the memories head on and put a whole-hearted effort into D.I.'ing her things.
A box of garbage bags in my hand, I started by putting on a pair of her socks, putting on my favorite music and opening her closet door again....and here is the proof.
...proof that I did accomplish something, 3 garbage bags of her clothes, and empty space in the closet...
....I was doing really well too, until I reached into her dresser and pulled out a stack of sweaters and found one of Daddy's white undershirts in the middle of it...
...and I worried...did she come across that at some point and cry herself to sleep...was she sad and I didn't comfort her like a good daughter should...did she leave that there, tucking it inside her things, knowing eventually I would find it...is it her reminder that he was here, too?
...and it was just too much...or maybe it was just enough...
...either way...I know...
...I know they both really lived and they were both really here.
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