With my husband gone over a month, I felt ready to start clearing out many of the piles that had sneaked up over time. The mountains of containers, that threatened an avalanche whenever I opened the cabinet door, was just one example of my indifference.
“My fault,” I admitted. I was conversing with Tommy because I felt guilty about the expunging about to take place. “I neglected too many things,” I said, not expecting a response. “I didn’t pay attention to what was sprouting in corners, on shelfs, in drawers.”
This cleansing, and more that was to occur that day, was part of an effort to take back my house. Without realizing it, I had ceded it to my husband. Not just the exterior, where he had tended a garden, painted the front porch and stairs, and stained the back deck, but it appeared I had turned over the interior space, as well.
After the cupboard was tidy, I started on the coat closet. I planned to donate Tommy’s wardrobe to Goodwill, believing the absence would ease my journey. But, I paused at the first hanger. “Not your high school jacket,” I said. “We’ll keep that.”
Dark green wool with grey leather sleeves, “Steinmetz H.S.” bannered on the back, “53” on one sleeve, and “Tom” on the front, the jacket was not an original; it was retro. But exactly like the one my young student would have worn in his senior year.
“And not the Fedora,” I said, as I stood on a step stool to reach the top closet shelf for the dozens of baseball caps and hats he had collected. “Yeah, you were a hunk when you wore your black leather jacket and topped it with that Fedora.” I pictured him, arms akimbo, giving a shake to show off.
After filling one large bag with items that I could part with, I moved to the second floor. In my takeover plan, I was not only de-cluttering, but also trading places. I coveted Tommy’s bathroom, which was within our master bedroom and had a shower stall, unlike the tub with shower head in my bathroom that had me clinging to grab bars for dear life.
Now in Tommy’s former bathroom, I pressed open the three mirrored doors that shielded his medicine cabinet. I tossed out hardened tubes of sunblock, congealed shaving cream, fossilized hair tonic, and prescription medications.
With a soapy rag, I whisked each shelf clean. I studied the mirror to be sure no apparition glowered back. Clear, so I made trip after trip from my former bathroom to my New Master Bath. Cosmetics, q-tips, cotton pads, women’s deodorant, all were lined up on the two lower shelves I could reach without a step stool.
Next, it was time to clear out rows and shelves of blue jeans, shorts, shoes, slacks, sweaters that were spread throughout two closets. Again, I hesitated. I could not give to Goodwill the sport coat and suit I insisted my betrothed buy for our Las Vegas wedding weekend in 1998. My frugal fiancee protested he’d never wear those fancy duds again, and he was partially right: The sport coat had perhaps a yearly airing, but the suit hung abandoned in the closet for the remainder of our marriage.
I would not toss out his painter’s outfit either: laborer-ripped long and short blue jeans, a red sweatshirt and orange T-shirt, and a crimson Harvard baseball cap -- all speckled with the blue of our porch. The set would remain here, just as he left it, all reminding me of Tommy’s tender maintenance of our home, before his cruel illness interfered.
The long row of T-shirts and sweat shirts my husband bought at resale shops slowed me down, too. I decided to keep them all and wear as sleepwear.
When I descended to the basement, I was confronted by several golf bags and clubs, dozens of boxes of Caldwell balls, paint brushes and opened buckets of blue paint. Instead of sorting them for donation, I turned and retreated upstairs. “Not today,” I said. “Not today.”