Holding on to her memory with a new perspective

Maybe a yard sale will help. That may seem like an odd solution but I have what is, for me, an odd problem.

My problem isn’t unique or particularly unusual and, ultimately, my solution isn’t either, but when my therapist made the suggestion it was the rope thrown to a person sinking in quick sand. (Yes, therapist. That is an entirely different column.)

When last we spoke, I was very candid and raw in my grief over the loss of my friend and former partner. I am in no way saying I’m “all better” now. Not by a long shot. It’s been barely two months since she died but it feels like decades ago at the same time.

While her death wasn’t exactly sudden, it certainly came at a time when it wasn’t completely expected. It was something we had both discussed, planned for and knew was inevitable, but still ... there’s just so much that simply cannot be planned for.

The sheer amount of things is the one I’m grappling with most right now. After 19 years together, there’s hers, mine and ours, and the volume of it all feels overwhelming at moments. Like an almost physical weight on me, suffocating and impossible.

The logical part of me understood I would need to let go of most of her things. Her clothes, for instance. We were very physically different, so there’s nothing of hers that fits me or, frankly, is particularly my style. She also stressed to me she didn’t expect me to hang on to everything that was hers, that she wanted someone to get use out of the material things she would leave behind.

In the weeks after her death, I sat in a silent house that felt too big, mentally reviewing what was hers. There was a whole rack of clothes in the closet she hadn’t worn in more than a decade. That was an easy place to start.

As I pulled them out and packed them in bags to take to the thrift store, I remembered some of the stories she told me about some of the shirts and such. Thrift stores she’d bought them at when she lived in Philadelphia. The occasion for a particularly fancy button down. It made me smile to know someone out there was about to stumble upon some pretty nice items at their favorite local thrifting haunt.

I took that time to also thin out some of the purses and bags I’ve accumulated over the years in my hunt for the perfect bag. I was a little chagrined to drop them off and have to tell the guy helping me unload, “Hang on, there’s more.”

There were other clothes in storage bags that were easy to add to the donation pile. After all, they too had gone unworn for many years. The clothes in her dresser are an emotional minefield I’m avoiding. I know exactly what’s in there. So many times she’d asked for that one shirt, the one she really liked, and without much more information, I was able to pull it out immediately. That is another project for another day.

There are small things and big things that I need to make decisions about — stay or go. As I explained all this to my aforementioned therapist, noting that my other struggle was that some of the bigger things I needed to let go could also be worth money, she made her very practical solution. Why not do a yard sale?

It was so simple but I’d gotten so lost in the quick sand, it never occurred to me.

So now this Saturday, the neighbors will be greeted by a host of things strewn about in the front yard with the hopes they will get a new life. I remind myself frequently and hold fast to the thought that they are indeed just things.

She is still with me, part of my heart and part of my family.