The damnable dilemma of accepting a difficult reality: ‘Never’

It was a good decision to get help donating Evelyn’s clothes.

That came into sharp focus for me this weekend, because I still had a few of her things I hadn’t given away. Facing them and folding them and taking them to charity caused me a couple of cathartic breakdowns.

This is different

It was different when I gave away the bulk of it. And bulk is a good label for the three garbage bags full of her lovely clothing I donated earlier this year. Wendy (Evelyn’s former student who became like a daughter to us) folded each item as I brought her the sweaters and blouses and slacks on hangers. We chatted and laughed as she worked, and it was easy for me.

My friend Roy was here overnight soon after that, and he drove me to the Dress for Success facility in Cincinnati where I unceremoniously added my load to the pile of clothes already just inside the “Donate Here” door. I was distracted by the marvel of his self-driving car and my duty to point him (and his Tesla) to the brunch spot I’d chosen. No problem.

But I had kept just a few things back, and I’m not sure why. Like a recovering alcoholic who dumps all his whiskey and wine except for that one vintage gift bottle in the back of his cupboard, I couldn’t make a clean break.

So many memories

I told myself she might need those slacks, that sweatshirt. One celery green top stood out to me from the few things still hanging in the closet.

I have so many pictures of her wearing it. When I was offering her clothes to my daughter and friends, no one chose it. But Evelyn always looked so nice in it.

Last week I put it with other items in another black garbage bag and stuffed it into the donations container in the Healing Center parking lot. Some unknown someone will choose it and wear it.

Will they look as lovely as Evelyn did? Will they have any notion of the special person who cared for this garment so they can wear it too?

No.

And then Saturday my eye fell on a rack with some of Evelyn’s coats. My daughter had taken three of the six I had found in our coat closet.

But three remain, including the dark turquoise car coat Evelyn wore again and again and again for years. The lightweight cream-colored scarf she so often wore with it is still tucked into its sleeve.

It’s just a coat. It can keep someone else warm this autumn. Why, why, is it still here?

I remembered the evening I found it for her when we were shopping together. I enjoy shopping; she did not. In an exact role reversal of the typical pattern, I was usually the browser; she was the hunter-gatherer (get in, make the purchase, and get out). Her closet had more than one garment I had found and suggested to her after she was ready to leave the store.

Earlier this year, anticipating winter, I thought, Maybe we’ll be taking her out, and she’ll need to stay warm.  

Saturday, as I stared at those coats, I told myself what I already knew. She will not be venturing out of the facility where she lives. She will never wear that coat again.

Never.

A damnable dilemma

“Never” is the damnable dilemma that faces me daily.

In so many ways, Evelyn is gone. But not in every way, of course, and I spend significant energy and time tending to her comfort and health. Never will life be the same for her and me.

When will it all end? Sometimes the answer to that question also feels like never.

It’s only natural, I suppose, that I sometimes lose my balance trying to walk the tightrope separating what was and what is. For years now, the one has been morphing into the other. And more than once I have been too unaware or uncourageous to face an irreversible change.

Finding that wonderful, wretched coat Saturday, I was slapped again with reality I realize but don’t want to ponder.

I felt better after sitting on the floor and sobbing for a few minutes. It’s good I can feel better, and that Evelyn is past wrestling with grief like mine.

Will she ever again need to confront, as I do, the truth about her diseases?

No. Never.