The Closet of Memory

But somehow it is different now.

Now that I am in that category, “older woman,” I am discovering that, as I grow older, some of my possessions have become more than things. They have gathered memories around them, holding moments, people, and pieces of all the women I have been.

Just to be clear, I am a minimalist. I am not a hoarder. I don’t have rooms filled with boxes I haven’t opened since 1987. I like space. I like simplicity. I actually enjoy getting rid of things that no longer have meaning or usefulness.

The problem is the recent discovery that some things do have meaning.

How do you discard a piece of clothing when touching it brings back a person you once were or someone you once knew? How do you put a dress into a donation bag when the texture of the fabric can suddenly transport you to a dinner, a celebration, a city, a conversation, a moment in time?

It is amazing how much memory can hide in a piece of cloth.

I have my daughter’s high school prom dress. The material is so beautiful that, at one point, I decided to make a pillow out of it. That seemed wonderfully practical. Instead of keeping an old dress tucked away, I would transform it into something useful, something beautiful, something that could remain part of my life.

There was only one problem.

I couldn’t bring myself to cut it.

I stood there with the dress and realized that putting scissors into that fabric felt strangely like cutting into the history itself. Logically, I know that makes no sense. The prom happened. My daughter wore the dress. The memory exists whether the dress is hanging in a closet or has become a pillow or has gone home with someone else’s daughter.

But confession here: I never went to a prom. I finished Highschool early and prom’s were out of fashion due to student protests when I graduated college. Maybe that’s why the dress holds so much for me.

Sometimes I touch something I no longer wear like a huge velvet shawl that I wore when my husband asked me to dance for the first time. I haven’t worn it for thirty years and yet when I pick it up there is a little spark, almost a flash. For a second, I am somewhere else. I remember the room. I remember who was there. Sometimes I remember how I felt in my body then. I may even remember the perfume I was wearing, the music that was playing, or the way he looked at me.

The object has become a key, and suddenly a door opens.

Perhaps this is one of the things no one tells us about growing older. We accumulate more than years. We accumulate evidence: A scarf is no longer just a scarf, ajacket is not simply a jacket. Jewelry, shoes, photographs, dishes, letters, even some ridiculous little object that would mean absolutely nothing to another person, can hold an entire chapter of a life.

And then comes the uncomfortable question: What do we do with all of it?

Professional organizers have a sensible answer. Take a photograph. Preserve the image and let the object go. They remind us that making space can be its own reward. There is something liberating about opening a closet and seeing room rather than accumulation.

There is another argument that becomes harder to ignore as we grow older. If I don’t decide what matters and what doesn’t, eventually someone else will have to do it for me.

What feels precious to me may look like an old dress to someone else.

Maybe the challenge is to understand that getting rid of the object does not require getting rid of the life attached to it. Perhaps we can stop thinking of this as “throwing things away” and begin thinking of it as deciding what deserves to travel with us into the next part of our lives.

I am not entirely convinced. I can photograph the dress and tell the story. I can write about the prom and remember my daughter walking out the door in it. All of that makes perfect sense.But when I attempt to place it in the giveaway box the feel of the fabric sends a little flash almost like an embedded code that signals me to stop.

There it is again a moment that was gone is suddenly present.For just a second, time folds in on itself.

So I am standing in my closet surrounded by things, memories, and very good advice about decluttering, wondering whether making space always means letting go.

Maybe some things deserve to stay.

Maybe some things deserve a photograph and a goodbye.

And perhaps growing older means having to choose.

Marie, do you have an answer for this? Because I’m still standing here with the prom dress, and the scissors remain untouched.