His clothes....

This past week my mom was here and she asked me if it was ok if she took some of Brian's clothes to cut up and make a quilt for each one of the kids. We had actually talked about this right after Brian died and I told her then that I thought that would be a great idea but I wasn't ready to go through his clothes yet.

When Brian first died I really didn't want to get rid of any of his clothes...well, except his socks and underwear. As a matter of fact, while those two items were probably the most painful for me to see when I was in the initial state of shock, they were also the first things I was able to get rid of. I remember when I came home from the burial in Oklahoma I took a black trash bag and put all of them in it and put the bag out for trash the next day. (Seems kind of weird now that I think about it....but that is what I did). **Edited to add: Come to think of it...I used to work with someone who made her husband promise that if anything ever happened to her he would immediately dispose of her "personal" items in a black trash bag....maybe that is why I did that....but probably it is more likely that it was just too painful to have those personal reminders of him.

It was about nine months later that I began to sort through his clothes and began the process of removing some of his stuff from the closet. I didn't have a problem giving away clothes that had no sentimental value....but if the shirt or pants had a memory tied to it then I kept it. I ended up with a whole rack of his clothes, pants, jackets, etc. and I put them in the very top of our (now I say "My") closet.

The clothes have sat untouched for about 15 months. Until this week. When my mom mentioned going through them and beginning to cut them up it triggered some emotion that surprised me. What is it about his clothes that when my mom starts cutting them up it feels like I am packing him away or moving on or maybe facing the reality (again) that he really never is going to wear those clothes again. He isn't coming home.

Interestingly, a couple days later I had a dream that triggered more emotion. I dreamed that Brian really was alive. He was in a rehabilitation unit and in my dream I was only just now going to visit him (after almost 2 years of him being in the unit). He was in really bad shape. He had bandages around his head, his eyes were swollen and his face was bruised. I could give a very detailed description of what I saw in my dream (but that would trigger more emotion). When he saw me he started mouthing "momma" to me (still not sure why he would say that to me but that was the dream) and shaking his head and trying to get up. It was very evident to me in the dream that he was not the same...he was not the Brian that I knew..but he was recognizeable. One of his hands was gone and there were bandages all over his body. He had very little control of his body movements...I will stop here because the point is not how awful this dream was....the point is that I think I still have some guilt in the back of my mind that I didn't see him at the hospital or at the funeral home. I was too chicken. I didn't want to remember him that way. And yet, I have never regreted that decision and do think it was probably one of the better decisions I made while in shock.

So, my mom asking to cut up his clothes triggered emotion....that triggered some guilt about moving on...packing him away....that triggered some unacknowledged guilt that I have had about choosing not to see him....and I remember saying in the dream to the nurse "I am such a bad wife"...."I should have come sooner".....

So, just when I think that I have dealt with many of the issues of grief that I need to deal with along comes an unexpected aspect of my grief that surprises me....and all of that because my mom starting cutting up his clothes....