Letting go of what you didn’t think you could let go of

When I got home from the hospital the day that Kenny died I saw that my son-in-law and his mother had washed all the dirty laundry. They washed the clothes in my hamper and stripped the bed where Kenny had the heart attack and cardiac arrest and then made it back up for me. They didn’t want me to have to worry about doing that when I got home and I appreciated that. The very last thing I wanted to have to do after having to unplug my husband’s life support and let him go was to wash the sheets and remake the bed–the same sheets that the paramedics had walked on top of to get to Kenny in the bed and defibrillate him.

I put the clean clothes away, including Kenny’s T-shirts, boxers, shorts and socks. I put his clothes right back where they belonged, because I had to. I could not throw them in a Goodwill bag. His clothes stayed in his dresser for months until I could bring myself to start giving them away. Some of his clothes are still in the dresser as I’m still not ready to give all of them away just yet.

As I was putting that laundry away that evening I saw that there were three of Kenny’s T-shirts that had not gotten washed. This was an odd sense of relief for me. They were the last three T-shirts Kenny ever wore–an old Wave Riding Vehicles shirt with holes in it, one that said Aloha, Hawaii on it, and a yellow Margaritaville shirt. That yellow shirt was the very last shirt Kenny ever wore. We had gone to dinner at Outback Steakhouse the night before he had the heart attack and this was the shirt he wore. The memory of him sitting across the table from me at dinner, wearing that yellow T-shirt and his baseball hat and us talking about nothing important is seared into my memory as this night was the last time he ever spoke to me.

When I saw the three unwashed T-shirts I grabbed them up in my arms and buried my face in them, smelling Kenny’s scent on them. I immediately started to cry. I stood there in our bedroom for a while crying, breathing in the last remnants of Kenny in long, deep breaths. That night, I got into bed clutching those three T-shirts as fiercely as I could. I didn’t really sleep much; there really wasn’t any way I could after just having had the man I’d loved with every fiber in my being for the last 35 and 1/2 years ripped away from me in the most horrific way.

I slept with those T-shirts in the bed nearly every night for the last 8 months. Some nights I cried hard tears for hours all over those shirts and they were still damp the next morning. I wiped my runny nose all over them and my make-up got smeared on them, too. Some nights I hugged those shirts tightly, as if Kenny were still inside them. Some nights they laid on Kenny’s spot on the other side of the bed, untouched, but still there beside me.

In a way, I was using those three shirts as a substitute for him. It’s as stupid as it sounds, I know, thinking three T-shirts could ever take the place of a living human being. I used those three shirts as a crutch to help me make my way through my grieving process, which I’m still very much going through now. Sleeping with those three dirty shirts helped me to feel closer to Kenny and so that’s why I did it. This is one of those times where I say that I did what I had to do and I don’t care what anyone else thinks of what I did.

I have never washed those three shirts. I could never bring myself to do so. I think subconsciously I was afraid that if I did wash them Kenny’s essence would finally be gone and I didn’t want that, not yet. I’m not really sure if I ever will get to the point of washing them. If I don’t then that’s okay, and again, I don’t care what anyone else thinks about that.

Last weekend I went to a past life regression mediation at the Edgar Cayce Center. Past life regression is something I’ve been doing for almost six years. I’ve learned a lot about myself in every one of them and see repeating patterns in a lot of them. I’ve lost my husband at an early age in quite a few of my past lives, just like I have in this one. I’ve also seen members of my family and friends in these regressions. People travel through their lives in soul groups and tend to reincarnate into lives together. Kenny has been my husband in numerous past lives and we were very much soul mates to each other, just like we were in this life.

In the regression I did last Saturday I saw myself as a peasant woman in the middle ages who had lost her husband early. I saw him clutch his chest and fall to the ground as he died in front of her. Her husband was a blacksmith; a craftsman, just like Kenny was. He made all his iron creations in a covered area next to their cottage in the woods. He wore a leather apron he made himself while he was working.

The woman was so distraught over her husband dying, just like me. She went to bed every night with her husband’s dirty leather apron clutched to her chest. She cried many tears of grief into that apron because she missed him so much. I literally could feel her pain right in the middle of my heart and it hurt very badly. I was feeling her pain as my own because I’m her and she’s me and we have both suffered the very same loss of the very same person. My heart was broken witnessing this woman’s pain through my closed eyes.

I wanted to reach back across time and say to this woman “Please tell me it won’t always hurt this bad. Please tell me the pain lessens over time.” But, I can’t do that. Her time here is long gone and her story has long since ended. She can only show me what happened to her; not what is going to happen to me.

As I came out of the regression I had tears in my eyes. Those tears were for this woman and the gut wrenching pain she felt over the loss of her husband, whom she loved with all her heart. Those tears were also for me, for the loss of Kenny, who I also loved with all my heart. Those tears were for all four of us, who are really just the two of us, only in different lifetimes. I cried because we lost someone we loved so deeply. I cried because that loss was suffered much sooner than it ever should have been for both of the me’s and both of the him’s.

It took a few seconds for me to digest the images I saw in this past life regression. After I got over the initial shock of seeing my husband die at such a young age yet again, I realized that this particular past life had something to teach me-that I had repeated the pattern of using my dead husband’s article of clothing as a crutch and it was making it harder for me to finally let him go. It was a sobering realization, and one I wasn’t quite ready to accept, but I knew I needed to so I wouldn’t be stuck on a plateau in my grieving process.

I told my friend I was there with what I’d seen in my regression and that I knew it was time to stop sleeping with Kenny’s shirts in the bed with me. He isn’t here any longer and the other side of the bed doesn’t need to be occupied by his dirty T-shirts. I don’t want to be alone the rest of my life but keeping those shirts in the bed as a crutch will certainly bring that into fruition. You have to make room in your life for what you eventually want to be in it.

That night, I slept with the T-shirts in the bed one more time…..just once more. I hugged them tight like they were Kenny himself. I said to him in my head that it was time to let him go. The next night I put the shirts on the cedar chest at the end of my bed. I haven’t slept with them any more. Those shirts might stay on the cedar chest for a bit until I decide where to put them. I won’t get rid of them-that I’m unwilling to do. Maybe they’ll be made into a T-shirt blanket with some of his other favorite T-shirts. I’m sure our grandson would love to cuddle up with a blanket made from the shirts that belonged to the Papa he loved so much.

I guess this is the acceptance part of grief; that part where you finally and fully accept that your loved one isn’t ever coming back. I’m wiping tears from my eyes as I type these words because there’s such a finality to it. I want to bury my face into those shirts and wipe my tears away with them, but I won’t. It still feels very much unfair that he left all of us, and so young. The pain we all feel still hurts like absolute hell and perhaps it always will. The hole left in our hearts from his death will never be filled because that space was just for him, and him only. But I think I’ve come to a place of making peace with his absence, if peace is what you call it. I just know that I’ve reached a point where I don’t need to sleep with the three dirty T-shirts in the bed next to me every night and that in itself has to be acknowledged in this whole unwanted process of grief.