Final Clothes

The autopsy took a week.

During that week, I imagined all sorts of terrible things. I still do, sometimes. While strangers were busy determining how Billy died, I was handed a task that seemed both ridiculous and impossible.

I had to pick out his clothes. Once the county released him to the funeral home, someone asked what he would be wearing.

Billy always had more clothes than any man had a right to own. I used to tell him he had the wardrobe of a supermodel, which was funny because there wasn't a designer label in sight. Billy shopped vintage stores, thrift shops, clearance racks, bargain bins, and, on occasion, the boys' department at Sears. He could spot a treasure in a pile of discarded tatters faster than anyone I've ever known.

His uniform rarely varied: jeans, boots, and a perfectly chosen t-shirt. Open one of his dresser drawers and you'd find underwear, socks, and shorts folded with military precision. Everything fit together like one of those little sliding-tile puzzles where there's only one correct arrangement. He claimed he learned that in the Navy.

I believed him. I owned one dresser. Billy owned four.

Eventually one of our two bedrooms surrendered entirely and became what we referred to as "the clothes room," though "small department store" might have been more accurate.

I knew immediately that he'd hate being buried in a suit.

For several days I stood in that room, staring at his clothes and breathing in whatever traces of him remained. I kept expecting to hear his key in the front door. I imagined him walking in, catching me standing there among his shirts, and saying, "You are crazy. What are you doing?"

I started with his favorite jeans. He'd found them in a vintage store years earlier. The denim had a worn outline of a tin of chaw in the right rear pocket, the previous owner’s habit stamped on Billy’s perfect bubble.

The underwear was easy. Billy wore white Jockeys and only white Jockeys. Some decisions make themselves. Then his boots. The black Docs I'd given him seven or eight Christmases earlier.

The shirt took longer. A t-shirt felt wrong. Eventually I found the one. An off-white corduroy button-down scattered with tiny navy-blue stars. It looked a little Western, a little whimsical, and entirely like something Billy would have loved because nobody else would have thought to buy it.

I folded everything carefully and placed it into a shopping bag. Then I handed it to the funeral director.

There are things nobody should ever have to do.

But grief has a way of eliminating all alternatives. When there's no choice, you move. You sign papers. You answer questions. You make decisions you never imagined making.

And sometimes you find yourself selecting the last outfit the person you love will ever wear.

A few days after I delivered the clothes, I saw them again. Billy was wearing them. And standing there, looking at him one last time, I knew I'd gotten at least one thing right.