This Old Ragged Shirt

       I pulled at the ends of the ragged shirt and examined myself in the mirror. The left side was drooping a good six inches lower than the right side.  I sighed and pulled at the right side in hopes to stretch it out; make the ends even.  The bright University of Tennessee color had faded from UT orange to a softer 'creamsicle' orange having gone through so many washes.  The neckline of the shirt was all out of whack and looked like I had been dragged around by the neck.  I frowned at myself in the mirror.  Did I wash it in hot water by accident or dry it the wrong way? I thought as I lifted the left droopy side of the shirt and turned it inside out. My stomach chilled as the bedroom fan chopped up air into cold pieces and propelled them onto me.  The tag wasn't legible as the care instructions had faded along with the UT orange and were somewhere that couldn't be found. 

       I had only washed the shirt twice myself; the other times he washed it.  I had taken his shirt as I cleaned his closet out and his dresser drawers.  I remember thinking on that day, How can I even begin to clean up after someones life? I did, though- one dresser drawer at a time.  One by one, I took posters down from his walls and threw them into a large trash bag.  All of his belongings were cleaned from his bedroom and placed with carelessness into a plastic bag to be donated to someone else in the world- someone I would probably never meet or know although I was within the perimeters of a small town.  I vacuumed his bedroom floor and emptied ashtrays in the same kind of bags his clothes had gone in.  Both trash and personal; treasured belongings could fit within the confines of a black plastic trash bag. How is that possible? Something seemed so wrong about that.  He wasn't there to defend his belongings because in a sense they no longer belonged to any man- until someone picked it up off of a thrift store shelf and bargained with the owner.  Those items would never be worth full price again whether it be material or sentimental value. 

       It wasn't my choice to clean out his room the very day he died.  I did it out of love for my Nana and that was enough reason in the moment.  All I really wanted to do was to close his bedroom door and take in the scent of him once more; run my fingers along his dusty shelves and UT posters. I wanted to sit on the edge of his bed and cry until I couldn't cry anymore. Instead, I stayed on my feet all day and emptied all that was ever his on this earth into a cheap plastic bag.  At some point between throwing UT t-shirts and UT pajama pants into the bag, I held onto one ragged shirt.  I couldn't let it go and I stuffed it into my purse that was on his floor.  Something made that shirt different than all of the rest- it was worn down to the thread and was even see-through in some places.  It was a shirt I remembered him wearing often and one that still had the scent of him embedded in it. 

       My dad didn't leave me anything of value when he died.  As a matter of fact his empty wallet was added to the thrift store pile.  It would one day possibly hold the money that would pay for father-daughter dates that we never shared.  His bedroom door was closed that day with only the smell of furniture polish and freshly vacuumed carpet left behind. He had been erased. I hauled in the heavy bags of clothes into the thrift store and hoped that nobody would buy his things; that he would be left perfectly preserved in many bags and never distributed to someone that wouldn't appreciate who he was. 

      I pulled at the shirt again and realized it would probably fall apart in the next wash cycle; the threads would end up where the worn color and words were.  His shirt was far too big for me and I looked just like a girl in her daddy's shirt.  Sometimes we associate things because they will always be true- some things can never be erased.  I walked into our office and dug to the bottom of a cardboard box;excavated the letters I had found in his room. Some letters were from him to me and others were letters I had given to him.  One letter was one I had sent to him in England- the only letter I sent him during my eighteen months there.  The letter had yellowed from years of cigarette smoke wafting against it. Letters he had written me were like hidden jewels that I found that day in the midst of erasing him.  He had never given them to me and one was being written the week of his death.  That letter was a farewell letter although he had no way of knowing it.

     I sat with letters scattered around me and I thought it wasn't by chance I had wrapped them up in his UT shirt and stuffed them into the belly of my purse.  I realized that he left me something that riches could never replace.  He left behind a story of restoration and love. An alcoholic most of his life, he had turned his life around at a time that was too late for his body but just in time to share his heart with me.  Written on every page were words of someone that had lived a rough life and found love in the midst of it all. That is something that will live in me and in my children and in my children's children. That can never be erased. I'm ok with having been left his words and his old ragged shirt.