The Fabric of a Life

Piles of clothing tumble through my fingers as if they are in a tremendous dryer set on slow motion. Work-worn flannel, silky polyester, toasty warm fleece, rough canvas. I touch each one gently and feel the fabric between my fingers, holding tight to both the living and the dead. In each bit of cloth memory is embedded; tiny moments in time I attempt to relive.

In the buttons on a plaid flannel shirt, I see my dad walking toward his garden to tend to the rows of potatoes that my mom will boil for dinner every night. I feel my mom's anxiety as I touch the neckline of the dark pink dress she wore to our wedding, her tense energy palpable as she entered into a frightening world of New Jersey, a place as foreign to her as America once was. My dad's denim overalls are stained with sweat and still covered in sawdust from the last time he wore them. There are an abundance of mostly blue polyester blouses because my mother hated to iron but loathed wrinkles even more. A camouflage jacket holds tight to gunshot residue from the last time my dad fired a gun while wearing it. Maybe it was the last time he ever fired a gun. I’ll never know. I find my dad's burgundy knit hat that he always wore when plowing snow. I hold it to my face and breathe in the pain of his loss. 

These are the clothes of two lives. My parents’ lives. They have left this earth; their clothes are being washed and carefully folded to be donated to charity. My brother and I have both chosen to keep items so that we may continue to feel them near us. My dad's closet was that of a working man: work clothes, plaid shirts for going out, one barely worn suit. My mother had so many clothes, yet giving any of them away seems so wrong to me. I do it anyway. These are only clothes, worn by the hard-working parents who raised me, yet every seam and each sleeve carries with it part of them. 

Only memories remain now. Between each tiny thread, no matter how ripped or well-preserved, there remains a part of their lives and a part of my life as well. I sort through those memories as the clothes continue their sad tumble; I file each memory away carefully as the clothes are folded, then hide the thoughts in a corner of my heart. The clothes will be gone, but my memories are packed away like the clothes, neat piles of my past woven together like thread, entangling me with the sadness of lives become dust.