Cleaning out the closet seems like a simple enough task. In my house it’s usually done twice a year; at the beginning of spring and at the beginning of fall. Simple. Put the clothes that are going out of season away, and take out the clothes that are coming into season. It can almost be fun…pulling out the clothes for the season coming up. “Oh I love this shirt”, I might exclaim to myself as I go along, pleased with the win of finding a shirt that I love and had forgotten about.
I cleaned out my closet last night, and it wasn’t so simple. Sure, the logistics of it all were the same. Put away the old, take out the new to be washed, folded, and placed onto the shelves into the bedroom closet. So what has changed? It seems that the story behind the clothes has gotten more complex. The woman who has worn these clothes is the past 4 years had to say goodbye to her firstborn child, just 4 hours after he was born. She has mourned the loss of her son and the loss of her hopes and dreams. Through the pain, she found hope again and was blessed to go through a subsequent pregnancy which resulted in the birth of a beautifully, healthy baby girl. A rainbow. Lucia. She has dared to hope again that her family could grow some more, only to have her hope clouded by fear as there has been no success in over a year. The clothes in this closet are not just clothes, they are part of a story filled with immense pain and extreme joy, with frightening fear and comforting hope.
Since my belly never grew to be as big as it would have had things gone right with Marco, there are a number of non-maternity clothing items that I have that I wore when I was pregnant with him. Even though at least one of those shirts would have made it into the “donate” pile this go-round, I can’t bear the thought of letting it go. One in particular is the shirt I was wearing when I was 22 weeks and 4 days, the day that we found out that Marco was not a healthy baby-to-be. The day the high risk doctor looked at me very seriously and told my husband, Bruno, and me that “we have some talking to do”. We went on to have an amnioscentesis that day. I will never forget squeezing Bruno’s hand with tears streaming down my eyes watching as they inserted the long needle into my belly and withdrew amniotic fluid. The fluid that my precious son had touched and was swimming in, now in a syringe, being sent off to a cold lab to be analyzed. That analysis would turn out to be as normal as it could possibly be, yielding more questions than answers. That was the first day that my world stopped. How could I get rid of that shirt?
The maternity clothes are tucked away on the side of the closet where we hardly ever look. They sit there on the shelf, haunting me and teasing me all at the same time. If I put them away in storage, I am giving up on having another, and I’m not even close to being ready to give up. If I leave them there, I have to see them every time I venture to the left side of the closet. Luckily that isn’t very often. So there they sit, waiting to be worn again. I have to have hope. I have to believe that the day will come when I can throw them on a big pile on the floor. That I will get to rummage through the pile, picking out what I want to wear, and what I might not want to wear. That I will get to wash them and put them on the front shelves of my closet, to be worn to cover up my growing belly again. That day has to come.
Then there are the various sizes of clothes in the closet. Oh the sizes! I have pants of 5 different sizes in my closet. I can’t possibly get rid of the bigger sized pants, in hopes that I will need to wear them again after having another baby. There’s that hope again.
Many things that are simple for an average person are just not simple for a mother who has lost her child or a woman struggling with infertility. It’s the little things like answering the question that comes almost daily, “is she your only child?”. Sure, a simple question to the innocent person asking it, but to you, the mother of a child who is gone, it is a loaded question for which there is no simple answer. It’s little things like going to the grocery store. A simple task to most, yet to a mother who lost a son, it is a chance for her to see lots of little boys…some of which remind you of what your son would have looked like, sitting in the cart, swinging his legs, chatting with his mommy. It’s little things like cleaning out your closet for change of season. Simple, yet complicated.
{Your Thoughts}