March 12, 2023

A Lesson in Purging, Packing & Letting Go

Like almost everyone, I check my cell phone frequently. From

the moment I swipe the alarm off and wipe the sleep from my eyes, I start checking apps. If I have notifications in the status bar, I check those apps first. Otherwise, I start checking them by rote. Weather. Business email. Personal email. Facebook. Instagram. Pinterest. Every single morning and often throughout the day.

On the morning of September 22, 2020, I woke up and began my day. My phone was on do not disturb. I puttered about the house and eventually picked my phone up to check it after my typical morning routine. I saw a lone notification from Facebook messenger in the taskbar. I unlocked the phone and opened the message. It was from one of my dearest friends' sisters. The message was short and ominous. “Domenica. Please call me. It’s about Maureen.” My body tensed and my heart rate spiked as I called the phone number in the message. Dread took my whole being hostage as her sister answered the phone and, in a soft and compassionate tone said “Maureen died last night.” I reactively blurted out “What?!” in a primal cry and listened as she explained what had happened and how she had died.

Maureen was dead. She died. Maureen, my friend. My chosen sister. My son Andrew’s Godmother. Maureen, who I loved and didn’t see as much as I wanted to and, of course, you know the stupid, dumb, pandemic didn’t help and now she was dead. I hung up the phone and told my husband and sons. I called my sisters, who were her bonus sisters. I called our mutual friends. I told them her heart stopped, and she was gone. As for my heart-that day it broke in two.

I was bereft, of course. I was angry at her for dying and at myself that I hadn’t made more of an effort to see her and reach out to her more in the past few years. I thought I had time. I did not and was now faced with that blistering truth.

I had seen her earlier in the month but I’d been in “hostess” mode at a small outdoor graduation party for my son, John. She was not feeling well that day and wanted to leave early to go home and rest. We had very little meaningful interaction that day. We didn’t even hug. I had no clue that would be the last time I saw her. This shreds my heart into slivers still—saying goodbye with the false notion that we would have more time.

In the days after, I stayed in touch with Maureen’s sister and offered to help her siblings pack up her home and sort through her belongings. She was, in complete transparency, a hoarder. I wanted to help them because sifting through a loved one’s belongings (and, she was the baby of the family which I find even more shattering) is daunting enough. Add to it, she had held onto damned near every single thing she’d acquired in her over 50 years of life. They gratefully accepted my offer.

I called two of my older sisters and asked them to join me that day. Practically speaking, we needed hands and help. Emotionally--I knew I would need my big sisters to hold me tightly when I inevitably and literally fell to my knees like a wounded animal, howling in agony. I remember the moment with great clarity.

We were in the “attic” space of her home. There were seemingly one million cardboard boxes, Rubbermaid storage boxes, built-in drawers, dressers, closets, garbage bags, and other containers. Any kind of vessel that could hold stuff, we were sorting it and packing it up. Unbeknownst to anyone there, there was a special dress I was keeping an eye out for. (Keep in mind she had held on to everything. She had clothes from a size 6 and every size up to size 24. Some with tags and never worn.) Of all the items I wanted to make sure to get my hands on, this dress topped the list.

This was a dress she had made by a native seamstress in Ghana, while on her mission trip there. This trip had filled her soul in a way nothing else had. She selected the fabric and wore it with boundless pride and joy. The dress was a symbol of a time I believe she was most in love with her life and with herself and her divine purpose on this earth. That dress, in her physical absence, was something I was determined to find and keep.

I was going through the last closet in the attic space. A huge number of items had been sorted through and boxed up for donation. I’d yet to find one dress and was in packing mode. I tried to stay efficient and productive and suppress the grief that welled, roiling inside my soul. As my sisters sorted and organized near me, I slid dress clothes off hangers and stumbled upon the very dress I was determined to find.

“Oh! I found it!”, I cried out jubilantly. Childlike, I beckoned my sisters to show them. Like I’d found the Ark of the Covenant, I implored them to come and behold the dress.

Suddenly, it was as if the dress itself ripped off the weak scab securing my wellspring of grief and I erupted in a fount of raw, piercing emotion.

I excitedly blabbered about the dress and all of Maureen’s triumphs and experiences in Ghana. I was joyful for a sweet, fleeting moment and then my heart ruptured. Torrents of anguish consumed me, body and soul. My bliss devolved into wracking sobs and wails. I slunk down the wall onto the floor and clutched the garment. I don’t know how long I sat there sobbing, slumped in torment. My sisters held me together both literally and figuratively.

Once I’d exhausted myself of this suffocating sorrow, I raised myself up--with the loving hands and hearts of my sisters--and resumed packing boxes. There were so many boxes. What would we do with them all? How was her life reduced to the contents of boxes?

I asked Maureen’s siblings what they were going to do with all the items her family didn’t want or claim. Many of them lived out of town and we couldn’t leave the items much longer at the house. I asked if I could take whatever they didn’t have use or need for to my home so that I could further sort her belongings nd then donate the items to various charitable organizations. They were grateful for my offer.

We filled two vans, two sedans, and one SUV with box after box after box of Maureen’s things. (By no means was it everything, either.) We filled my garage with those boxes and during the following two months, I spent time every day, unpacking, sorting, and repacking every box. In that time I was able to examine items and reach out to friends and loved ones to offer them things that were meaningful to them, I was able to use her items to minister to others--something she adored in life--and, selfishly, purely selfishly, I got to commune with her spirit and process my grief in revisiting her earthly belongings.

In doing so I recalled some of the most beautiful, poignant, amazing times of my life as her soul sister and friend. This was spiritual work for me, packing and unpacking her boxes filled with tokens of her life.

I saved some of her things for myself. Her weathered Trivial Pursuit game that we played once a week together early in our friendship. The royal blue cape with a plaid scarf she bought in Ireland--the blue almost as brilliant as the blue of her eyes. A picture of her with fierce bedhead and a goofy smile that makes me burst into laughter every time I look at it.

Articles of her clothing so that when I visit somewhere she would like, like bodies of water or parks, I can take her on adventures with me and remember her zest for travel and love of nature.

And, of course, the dress. It hangs in my bedroom closet, nestled between my own dresses. When I miss her the most, I pull it out and sit with my memories of her and my still-fresh grief and I allow myself to feel how much I miss her presence on this earth.

Later, on a date that I cannot recall, many of her family members and my husband, and I convened at her burial plot at the cemetery to lay her to rest. She was cremated and buried near her parents. I don’t remember details about the day other than it was blessedly sunny and cool. Otherwise, it’s as blurred as pouring rain on a windshield in the pitch dark. I distinctly recall seeing that small box of her ashes being lowered into the ground as grief seized me again. This tiny box contained the physical remains of a whole human life.

This--the very last box of hers, one I could neither keep nor unpack. The final box I had to accept I couldn’t take home with me to “sort out” into neat piles. This was the box that reminded me that our lives cannot be contained or reduced to the contents of boxes. Her intelligence was never neatly boxed. Neither was her wicked wit and her total love and adoration of children. Her compassion and care weren't found in the bottom of boxes or left to sit in garbage bags.

Every single, beautiful, awe-inspiring thing about Maureen and the impact she had on me and everyone who was blessed to know and love her, could never be held or contained neatly in a box. Her life and her spirit were boundless.