Cleaning House

So I cleaned my house this past week. The entire house. Every room. Every shelf. Every closet.
Ah...yes....the closets.
I can't tell you just how many trash bags full of no longer needed items there were but the people at Goodwill were only too happy to remove them from my sadly overwhelmed trunk. No doubt some of those items will become someone else's treasure very soon and that makes me feel good inside. There were household items, clothes , linens, toys ,books and even a bike and speakers. Most were more than easy to bag up and hand off to the next person. Most. Not all. Some were harder to part with. Some were almost impossible to even take out of the closet to begin with. Some were like parting with a loved one. Because in some sense that is exactly what I was doing.
Cleaning out closets has never been especially difficult for me. It's simple,really. I take a bag and grab anything and everything that hasn't seen daylight in the last 2 or 3 months. All those "as soon as I lose 10 pounds it'll fit" items and the "someday I'll be able to wear that again" pieces are the first to go because let's be honest....I'll just go shopping at some point and replace them anyway so it isn't like I will miss them at all. And then there are the items that were hanging in the center of my closet.This section of clothing is different. This section is filled with more than just clothes. It's filled with shattered hopes and dreams and broken "what if's".
In the center of my closet hung the clothes I bought one day long ago. It seems at times as if it were a lifetime ago, maybe even someone else's lifetime. But it wasn't. It was mine. It still is. These were the clothes that were going to "grow with me" as my belly continued to expand - proof of the two tiny lives that were growing within. These were the clothes that would carry my through my nine months and then remain a part of my "after" wardrobe while I worked to be comfortable, care for my two new tiny people and attempted to hide the damage from all those months of "eating for three"! These are the clothes that have reminded me every day for three years that my belly never fully expanded, that those two tiny lives never finished growing and that the "damage" was never fully realized. At least not physically. Not as I had planned. Not at all. Yet these were the clothes I couldn't bring myself to part with.
Until now.
I'm not sure why I couldn't part with them before. And I'm not really sure why I was able to this time. That's the thing about losing a child (or children)......nothing you think, feel or do makes any sense or follows any logical thought pattern to anyone other than another parent who has lost a child. There are no reasonable explanations for why we hold onto the things we do or why we don't cling to others. There is no sense in when and where we lose control of our emotions or how we are able to maintain it. Our actions don't make sense. Quite simply-our lives no longer make sense. Because losing a child DOESN'T MAKE SENSE.
And so, I cleaned my house. All of it. Every closet. And I said goodbye,again......because with every turn of every corner in the journey we take after losing a child it seems there is another something to say to goodbye to that takes us back to the day we said our ultimate,our hardest,our most painful goodbye.