"MY DEAD HUSBAND'S CLOTHES closet held me hostage for almost four years. In the early days after Arron's death, his clothes hung patiently in his closet waiting for his return. I would open the closet doors to see his shoes staring at me expectantly, longing for the warmth of his feet. I would stand inside the folding louver doors and cry deep, wet tears into his blue terrycloth bathrobe that still smelled of him. I fingered the striped flannel shirt that everyone hated but him. His socks were piled impossibly high in a rolling wire mesh basket. Another level of the basket held his underwear. They waited for him, as did I. I would close the closet doors and fling myself face down onto the bed in dramatic sobs.
The closet became a litmus test of my grief. Open door, cry, close door, pass test. Still grieving. Repeat in four weeks.
Soon, the act became almost masochistic. A crying dry-spell would send me back to the closet for a rain dance of tears. A whiff of his bathrobe was a reliable shaman. The tears would cleanse my body, releasing me from the grip of grief. Relief washed over me--I still mourned for my husband honorably, appropriately, with tears and sobs.
My brother [Matt] and Arron's best friend, Bruce, visited for Thanksgiving. I saw my opportunity to bestow some of Arron's favorite items on the people he loved. Giving his clothes and shoes to loved ones seemed preferable to hauling garbage bags full of him to Goodwill.
I watched as my brother tried on his cowboy boots--tall, slender, and full of swagger. Matt shrank in my mind to a ten-year old boy, trying on his older mentor's boots, proud, but not certain he would ever fill them. He strutted around uncertainly claiming to be honored to own them. I knew he would never wear them. Those boots were so ubiquitous with Arron that they would be unfathomable on anyone else. I had hoped that my brother might take on some of Arron's characteristics when he wore them, that the boots were somehow magic, but his tiptoeing inside of them, not wanting to fully plant his foot into them revealed the truth.
Bruce pulled Arron's favorite leather jacket around his torso, trying to make the buttons meet. The coat, which had fallen to Arron's hips, reached halfway to Bruce's knees. It took on a new persona on Bruce's body and molded itself instantly to him. It no longer resembled anything Arron had ever worn.
Despite the ill-fittings, I was glad for these reminders to be gone; to be the responsibility of someone else. I suspected that they would wind up at Goodwill someday, but I didn't want to know, I didn't want to be the one who took them there.
My brother and Bruce walked off feigning pleasure at their new acquisitions, but really I think they were pleased at having helped me through a difficult process. They seemed to understand by the look in my eyes, my relief at having purged a little of Arron in a loving way."
"What an eloquent, brave and (even) occasionally comic account Abigail Carter has given us of her zigzagging odyssey through the country of mourning. No mourner has it easy, but Carter's tasks were daunting - to mother two suddenly fatherless children, to find her own way through the strife that bereavement brings to her parents and mother-in-law, and to disentangle her personal grief from the national mourning. Through it all, she is a generous, nuanced and admirably honest guide."
- Katherine Ashenburg, author of The Mourner's Dance: What We Do When People Die
"Beautifully written . . . Anyone who has faced enormous loss is sure to find some of their experience articulated in Carter's intimate and candid memoir. It is a book full of tenderness, anger and - ultimately - hope, and one I imagine one friend will give another in times of hardship and loss."
- Theo Pauline Nestor, author of How to Sleep Alone in a King-Size Bed
"One of the most beautiful, engaging, exquisitely crafted books I have ever read. Abigail Carter warmly and courageously invites us into the heart of her intensely private grief - a grief we all shared, but, perhaps, never tasted so fully until now."
-- John E. Welshons, author of When Prayers Aren't Answered and Awakening from Grief
"A beautiful example of what is possible when we allow suffering to reshape our idea of happiness."
-- Maria Housden, author of Hannah's Gift
"Eloquent and honest. . . . Reading it is like sitting at your own kitchen table listening to Abigail Carter's story, a story that is unnerving, uplifting and occasionally humorous. . . . remarkable." - "Globe and Mail
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"She delves deeply into herself andgives us the unvarnished truth about what she felt . . . It's a book that will be helpful to people suffering sudden and terrible loss." - "Niagara This Week
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"Ms. Carter is scrupulously honest, not sparing herself or others when it comes to descriptions of reactions, of situations handled well, or not so well." - "Peterborough Examiner"
