THE LETTING GO

I didn’t plan this. It planned me. Piles and piles of things lovely and once-loved telling me to let them go and in the process, to set the memories of something hard and too familiar free.

_____________________

Agitated is such a good word. Necessary in its ability to capture the largeness of a feeling, its source as yet undetermined, but large all the same.

I hadn’t planned on cleaning out my closet. But it had to be done. Over the past nine months I’ve lost forty pounds. 

Women stop and ask me how I stay so “skinny.” They don’t really want to know. If you’re alarmed, don’t be. One, because it’s not the cancer that’s to blame but the metabolic approach to fighting it. Two, I was exactly this weight in high school…my body feels familiar, even comfortable with itself.

Which brings me to the collection of designer dress, pants, and tops strewn around my room and piled high on my bed. Both my daddy and my mother-in-law were in the fashion business. From the time I can remember we referred to even the most couture pieces as “rags.” But letting this carefully curated collection go feels anything but like letting go of something unvalued and cheap.

It’s not the work of it that has me agitated. Of this, I am clear. Yet something has stirred me to an internal discontent that is somewhat unfamiliar. So much am I at odds with myself that I can’t decide whether to listen to YoYo Ma or Portugal The Man.

ISN’T IT SO LIKE WE HUMANS TO MAKE UP A REASON FOR OUR DISPLEASURE AND UNEASINESS WITHOUT STOPPING TO EXAMINE THE UNDERLYING CAUSE—

WHEN IS THE LAST TIME YOU LASHED OUT AT SOMEONE LOVED AND INNOCENT BECAUSE OF YOUR NEED TO JUSTIFY YOUR MOOD?

Somewhere between hanging jeans and folding sweaters there is this gnawing feeling I have done exactly this before:
I can see her impossibly tiny waistband in my minds-eye
I can smell her Channel No. 5
I feel the tears fall onto plaid and denim
I remember why.

WE ARE CHARGED WITH THE DISPOSAL OF A VAST AND INDESCRIBABLE LIFETIME TUCKED NEATLY INSIDE TEN BY TEN-BY-TEN WALLS.

THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF IT OVERWHELMS MY SENSES, NOT ONLY IN THE RECALLING OF JACKIE’S DIFFICULT DEPARTURE BUT THE TENDERNESS WITH WHICH I RECOGNIZE THAT I AM NOW ENTRENCHED IN AN INEXPRESSIBLE TRANSITION SEASON OF MY OWN.  

There are secrets in our dark places, tucked away like the little French cigarettes nested in her designer things. Then comes the vision of me finding money [lots of it] in the silk lining of her pockets, and I am laughing through the tears.

DID SHE PLAN TO FUND SOME GRAND ADVENTURE, ONLY TO GO TO ONE THAT OPENS ITS GATES FOR FREE?
WE ARE HERE. AND THEN WE ARE NOT.
PERHAPS THAT’S WHAT’S EATING ME.

I hear her dry cleaner one day saying, “Where did that darling little brunette go?” And only those closest to her will know.

In the Midwest my people are fond of open caskets. I set aside her black and white St. John knit. And I imagined her Creator smiling at the stunning-ness of a desire to be welcomed in style.

The letting go is hard. Even when we plan on going nowhere.
I suspect that I am agitated because we never really know.
I am letting go of pieces of me that don’t suit me anymore,
while wrestling with the finality of how to dress the soul.

WHAT DOESN’T FIT THE ‘YOU’ YOU ARE NOW?—
EVEN THE THINGS WE MOST-VALUE,
EVEN THE THINGS WE HAVE ALWAYS SEEN AS BEAUTIFUL,
THESE ARE NOT FOREVER.

I nestle in, between pink sequins and ivory linen, and somewhere in me I know.
Forty pounds less and dozens of empty hangers.

I am still a queen.

Not because of something hanging in my closet.
But because of what I mean to Him.

NOTES:

Tucked inside my closet story, intertwined like golden thread, is the memory of a mama who fought her own battle with cancer as elegantly as she wore her designer jeans. 

These last two days I’ve had the best time making new friends on Marketplace and Poshmark.
My profile reads, “I’m letting go of clothes I no longer need as cancer is letting go of me.”

It turns out, what we wear on the outside is our way in.
Clothing is not unlike our sanctuaries. It is an artistic extension of who we are.
To say, “I am here,” or “I once was,” is [when you really think about it] a beautiful thing.

I want to be, on the outside, someone who invites you to be real.
“I like your shoes,” starts a seemingly superficial conversation that has potential to save someone’s life.
It seems we are all agitated about something.
That something [for the most part] is not what we imagine it to be at all.

This week I encourage you to take a moment and ask yourself, “What am I troubled about?”
Then sit and wait for the answer. Even if it takes a little while.
I recommend the closet. It’s the most private and sometimes the most comforting place I know.
Surrounded by little pieces of you on hangers, and tucked neatly inside drawers,
In the familiarity of you—you can find your way back…or at least your way through.

Letting go doesn’t mean an end to something. It’s where we make room to begin.