When a loved one dies, we often struggle with the giant and occasionally the debilitating pregnancy of sifting through their possessions; to decide what we can realistically keep and what we just don’t have room for (both metaphorically and literally). This sorting rarely happens quickly. Instead, it can stretch on for months.
It took Amy Paturel and his family a full year to complete the process after his father’s death. They implemented it in stages, moving a lot of stuff through the warehouse without even sorting it.
“Then, piece by piece, over a period of several months, we’ll visit the warehouse and look at things,” Paturel said. One of the items she wanted to keep was her father’s “Cheers” hoodie.
“I still wear it occasionally,” she said. “I feel closest to him when I’m around him. I mean, it stays in my closet 90% of the time. But in those moments when a wave hits, sometimes I put it on and curl up on the bed.
One of the things I keep is a beaded bustier and pant set made by my mentor Jorge, who passed away over 20 years ago. In the 1950s and 60s, when she was young, she sewed elaborate clothes herself before going out every weekend. He gave me this ensemble towards the end of his life. It’s not something I’d ever wear (I keep them well hidden on a shelf in my living room closet), but they’re artifacts from a time long gone; impeccably built and perhaps most importantly, the embodiment of grace, beauty and joy that was Jorge.
Journalist Amy Jury she kept her mother’s Betty Boop pajamas because she “absolutely loved Betty Boop. I even buried her with a statue of Betty Boop.
Robert Neimeyer, founder and director of the Portland Institute for Loss and Transition, calls these things we keep “canisters of stories,” a description that sounds incredibly succinct and accurate.
AS Sherry Cormier, psychologist and author of “Sweet Sorrow,” explained, “I think dressing someone up helps reinforce the idea that, yes, this person was here, this person lived.” Cormier herself keeps a closet full of souvenir T-shirts that her late husband bought her whenever they went out.
These objects not only remind us that this person existed, but also provide a tangible object that shows a part of who they were when they lived.
Here’s how it can help you preserve tangible items.
We all suffer differently. There is no right or wrong way to process loss, and no linear sequence of steps to follow. All the psychologists I spoke to spoke “sharp pain” AND “integrated pain”.
Acute grief is that intense, sometimes overwhelming despair that we initially experience when a loved one dies. Integrated grief is where we (hopefully) end up, where our loss becomes part of the fabric of a new reality where, despite the loved one’s absence, we can move on. No one, however, is saying that this is an easy state to achieve.
“To lose someone it encompasses the entire human experience,” explained Sherman A. Lee, associate professor in the psychology department at Christopher Newport University.
“People have their own individual grief journey,” Cormier added. “There is a popular misconception that you will go through five predictable stages of pain and they will be linear. And it really doesn’t work that way.”
“The goal of acute grief is to get to the acceptance and integration part where you can accept that there’s been a huge loss and you have a huge void, but you can get to this point where you can integrate the loss into your life. Cormier said. For some people, holding on to a person’s clothes (or belongings) can help them through the grieving process.
“We are beings who need things to touch, look at, smell and experience,” Lee explained. “People hold on to things to bring back those memories; they have those connections. And that can be a good thing.
“My mom’s purse feels like such a direct connection to her. In the months since her death, I have realized that I still have a strong relationship with my mother and that she is still evolving.”
– Valerie Jamieson
The clothes and items we choose to keep can serve as a (sometimes much-needed) reminder that when we lose someone close, we don’t lose the relationship.
“The relationship lasts,” Cormier explained. “The love I had with that person still lives on.” Having an object—a container, if you will—for those stories helps reinforce that knowledge.
After a fusion scientist Valerie JamiesonWhen her mother died suddenly three years ago, she kept her purse — “a purple organizer-style bag with lots of pockets” — because it helped her get through the shock and grief. For six months after her mother’s death, she spent every evening talking, holding, and rummaging through that purse (and still does about once a month).
“We used to joke that she could never find anything in her so-called organizer bag,” Jamieson said. “Each pocket contained something very mundane and personal: a cigarette and lighter, mints, lipstick, hearing aid batteries, a tampon, handwritten lists she had made and her wallet containing photo ID and bank cards” . After six months of going through the bag every day, Jamieson shockingly discovered a zipped pocket with a set of keys inside.
“My mom’s purse feels like such a direct connection to her. In the months since her death, I have come to realize that I still have a strong relationship with my mother and that she is still evolving,” Jamieson said.
Psychologically, these things we hold on to are similar to the concept of transitional objects for children. A transition item is something that helps a child with separation anxiety, such as a blanket or a teddy bear.
“Psychologically, whether it’s an original piece of clothing or something that I’ve taken and turned into something else, it provides a sense of security and stability,” in the same way that a blanket soothes a child, Cormier said.
Cormier believes that clothing “is something that we can hold on to that helps us transition from a state of acute pain to different stages of that pain; something that helps us integrate and accept the loss.
Are these elements chemically or biologically related?
The short answer to that question is yes, and then some.
“Pain affects every part of your existence,” Lee explained. “It’s the most stressful thing people go through.” In fact, the loss of a partner or spouse is considered the number one most stressful thing in a person’s life.
The attachment we feel to the clothing of a deceased loved one involves many of the same chemical connections in our brains as drug addiction, Lee explained. The desire and craving for an individual may be similar to the desire for a particular drug; or rather, the way that drug makes us feel.
Lee told me that people not only experience a chemical or biological connection to the objects they choose to keep, but they can also have psychological, social and spiritual connections to them. A loved one’s clothing often retains the person’s scent, which it can trigger specific memories about that person.
Deborah Way’s grandmother Pauline, who always smelled of patchouli, always carried a silk scarf with her in case of “rain, wind or sudden currents.” When Way was in his twenties, his little girl gave him a silk paisley scarf, which Way didn’t like because it looked too “grown up”. As she became a “mature lady”, she began to love him.
“I feel closest to him when I’m around him. I mean, it stays in my closet 90% of the time. But in those moments when a wave hits, sometimes I put it on and curl up on the bed.
– Amy Paturel, describing her father’s “Cheers” hoodie
“I spritz it with patchouli every time I wear it and say hello to grandma and tell her what’s new with Hazel (Way’s daughter) and how much I miss her,” Way said. When O, The Oprah Magazine (of which Way was editor for years) closed at the end of 2020, she opened an Instagram account called “The KeepThings” to which anyone can submit a story about any item (clothing or otherwise) that connects them to a loved one.
She describes it as o “Venn diagram of my personality and some of my abiding interests: love of heirlooms, preoccupation with death, attachment to objects, extreme sentimentality, papyrus for a good story about human connection.” He has published about 120 short stories so far. If you read them, the connections people describe to these elements are obvious, varied, and undoubtedly important to each person’s grieving process.
Do you let go and move on?
Science writer and editor Jennifer Huberhis the father died last summer at the age of 92. His mother had died 29 years earlier, and the family had now emptied the 60-year-old house in order to sell it.
“All of their possessions were divided between families or carefully donated,” Huber told me. Her extended family has an ongoing text thread where they share photos of her parents’ things in their new homes, which seems like a really cool way to honor and remember them.
“Their blessings reached their loved ones and each other, spreading their love and impact around the world,” Huber said.
Like the entire grieving cycle, how we move forward is an individual process; sometimes a winding path that only makes sense to ourselves. Which, according to the psychologists I spoke to, is absolutely normal. Many of us will realize at some point that we need some kind of help, which often gets in the way of community.
“We actually don’t go very well from acute pain to integrated pain. “Many bereaved people manage to heal on their own, but they do so within a community,” explained Cormier.
The community can pass support groups or just going out with a friend who listens and recognizes your feelings and struggles. Sometimes just telling your story to a stranger can help.
As Way explained on KeepThings, “Readers make this a real community; [one that is] very generous and supportive. People like to talk about the dead and there aren’t enough opportunities to do that.”
“We can’t solve the pain, we have to deal with the pain,” Cormier said.
I don’t think we will ever stop dealing with certain types of pain, especially one that is the result of a loved one. We continue to deal with it in many different ways as life goes on.
And sometimes the way involves putting on a sweatshirt that belonged to your late father and sitting on the sofa, or even knowing that on the top shelf of your closet, neatly wrapped in tissue paper, is one of the most fabulous. bras ever built by one of the nicest people you will ever meet.
I am an experienced author and journalist with a passion for lifestyle journalism. I currently work for Buna Times, one of the leading news websites in the world. I specialize in writing stories about health, wellness, fashion, beauty, interior design, and more. My articles have been featured on major publications such as The Guardian and The Huffington Post.