Cleaning out our closets

My momma's purse is sitting in my hall closet. Almost four years now that I have had it and I have no memory of how that happened. I know I took it to my childhood home that first night in the hospital - it rode next to me in the front seat of my daddy's SUV along with everything else he didn't want to keep at the hospital. Her wedding ring. Her jacket. Her gloves folded neatly on top of it all.

But how did it make it to Georgia? Or from the move from our townhouse to our new house? There are so many memories etched into my brain from those weeks - the exact words of grief-filled conversations, the smell of certain foods being dropped off at the house, the Christmas decorations that glittered in our darkest moments. But I don't remember the purse or how it came to be mine.

So, it sits in our closet. Surrounded by baby shoes and umbrellas and errant doll accessories.

It occurs to me that since the loss of my mom, the amount of clutter in my life has grown exponentially. Besides the emotional clutter that accompanies every day - big or little - there is actual, literal clutter everywhere. Our closets are overflowing.

They are stuffed with the tiny little girl dresses I purchased late at night because I couldn't sleep with the weight of the grief sitting on my chest. The ones that reminded me of Momma and that I could imagine her saying "Oh, honey ... I love it," when she saw it. The ones that made me think maybe if my daughter looks put together, I can pretend I have it together, too.

The holiday books that I collected and cataloged litter the playroom and fall off bulging shelves. But I ordered more because I knew the days of monthly themed packages packed with care were over and I was both devastated and furious to have B (and now her brother and sister) denied that love and attention.

Drawers hold random scraps of her handwriting. They aren't just the heartfelt cards and book inscriptions written in her loopy prose reminding me of how loved I was. No - I kept even the small notes that said things like "Maggs - Here are the jackets you left at the house on your visit. I love you. Momma." Inconsequential, unremarkable notes that I couldn't let go.

And the piles of her things ... for a long time they were everywhere. Piles upon piles of things I couldn't bear to see discarded as Daddy downgraded from her dream house to his. Things that didn't fit in our already cramped townhouse but couldn't be let go. It felt like an act of betrayal, almost, to disregard the things she loved.

Which is silly when I think about it now, almost four years later. This was a woman who had little sentimental value for possessions and in many ways despised clutter. Sure, she had a few treasures she valued but for the most part, she was as minimalist as a Baby Boomer can get. This is the same woman, after all, who asked on the day I left for college if she could take down all my posters, photos, and high school knickknacks because they were "just too much." The same woman who would use daddy's business trips as a time to clandestinely throw out whatever she deemed as clutter. The same woman who called us that first day we were in the NICU with our first baby to ask (and somewhat demand) if she could clean out my husband's t-shirt drawer.

But despite her own personal feelings on too much stuff, I found myself mourning through holding on and acquiring. I wrapped myself in her things like a protective shield, somehow believing they could stave off the grief that felt crippling at times. I wore her ring to the birth of my second daughter, her namesake, as a security blanket of sorts. In fact, I wore it any time I felt I needed extra strength to get through a day. I showered my girls in things I thought she would love as if that would fill the hole she left and the experiences they were being deprived.  The night of her 66th birthday - the first after her passing - I sat on my closet floor clutching one of her sweaters. In between deep breaths of her perfume that still lingered on the fabric, I sobbed for all that we had lost. For what seemed like an eternity, there I sat clutching the sweater like some sort of talisman that would connect me to her while simultaneously banishing my grief.

But as time has passed, some things have been lost. The worksheets she picked out for her grandchildren have been completed. Her diamond earrings were taken to preschool by a precocious 3 year old who told me about the escapade days later, with saucers for eyes and trepidation in her voice. As our family quickly progressed from three to five, some things even lost their meaning. I couldn't remember why I had saved them or, sometimes, even if they were hers.

More importantly, my grief evolved. The need for the physical - to hear her voice and feel her arms wrapped around me and smell her perfume and mousse - lessened. It certainly hasn't disappeared but as my new normal is her in absentia, the need for the physical feels less urgent somehow. So I don't spend half a day crying anymore when something of her's is broken by little hands. I don't need to rub my hands along something that was her's to feel her presence.

No, my grief, and thus my coping, has morphed. I connect now in the activities I do with my babies - so many are replicas of the ones she did with me as a child. I tell them the same stories she told me and rub their backs like she did mine. I volunteer and give to my community as she modeled her entire life. I cook her recipes and listen to John Denver. I connect through the experiences she gave me, not the things. I remember the warmth and safety I often felt around her and try to replicate that whenever possible. I wrap myself in the everlasting gifts she gave us rather than the earthly. Her legacy is not of clothes or jewelry or holiday decorations. Her legacy is how she made people feel - her love for those hurting, her tenacity whenever faced with a challenge, her firm belief in God and family and serving both by doing for others.

So, though the purse still sits in my closet, that is not what I will pass down to my children of her. I hope they will not walk away with just trivial tokens but with a greater sense of who she was, how she shaped me, and thus how she shaped them. That they would know her and not just her things.

"A good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children."  2 Proverbs 13:22

Momma and her youngest grandchild.
Photo credit to the incomparable Carrie Gantt
http://www.carrieganttphotography.com/
Original photo of momma by the amazing Lindsay Collette
http://www.lindsaycollette.com/