A Basket of Laundry

I still have your laundry.   It’s sitting in my closet.

Just a basket.   Full of the things you wore before you were gone.   And they smell like you.

So I keep it there.   Because I can’t bear to wash it.   To wash away your smell.   I don’t want to forget.

So it sits there on the dresser in the closet.   So I can walk in, and take a moment, and  remember what you smelled like. To feel your presence for an instant.

It doesn’t exist in a lot of places, so those shirts are precious.   They are what I have left of what your physical body was.  

I have gotten rid of the suits and the jeans, and all that hung there unworn, but this I can’t get rid of.  

So I will keep it sitting in the closet until your scent leaves those clothes.  

I wish I could bottle it, so when I am lonely I could just open the container and still have a little piece of you.   But since I can’t, I will keep rotating the things to keep it alive as long as I can.

Grief is a nasty beast.   It hits you hard in the beginning when you are expected to cry and be sad.   But then you start to see glimmers of what today now looks like, and you can laugh, and smile, and work, and move forward.  

And then in an instant, you are hit with a wave.   An all consuming feeling of loss and emptiness that shatters your heart again into tiny sharp little shards that hurt every time you breathe.

And in those moments I go to the closet.   To have that one thing I have left....a scent of the life I had before.

The life that left that day when you did.

And yet I still have to keep going.   I have to keep moving.   Keep living this new life. And laughing gets easier, and smiling becomes natural again, and breathing doesn’t hurt.

I will keep that basket until it doesn’t hold one more scent of you.   And then I will wash it, and put it away.   And I will grieve that too.   The loss of what I have left.

I miss you.   And when your laundry is cleaned and gone, I will have your memories alone.

And I know when that time comes, it will be enough.