I have nothing against closets. They keep things hidden. The unsightly, the broken –- those things we do not want others to see. Anything can be stuffed into a willing closet, and most of them are willing. Then we can close the door and apply the ageless expression, “Out of sight, out of mind.” From there we are able to venture outside and welcome the azalea blooms in the front lawn, or have tea with a friend, or even leave the house with all its closets and make a trip to a faraway place.

Every summer I vow to clean out the closets. Each summer, as one sun-baked day ended with a magnificent sunset of lavender and orange and flowed toward a new day, I found I had yet to rid my closets of what lurked inside them.

Suddenly, this summer opens like a door with an overly-active spring. The truth is exposed; we are moving. We are selling this house and buying another.

I start with the pantry. It is easy because it consists largely of canned goods, cereal boxes and jars and other boxes. Those can stay as my three children will no doubt be able to consume much of them except for, perhaps, the packaged seaweed from Japan.

The bottom two shelves are a bit more challenging. They sag with stacks of sticker and coloring books, crayons and puzzles. These shelves hold the years of activities that used to occupy my children during their preschool days. Now with my children’s help, we clean off each shelf, sort through the books, count puzzle pieces to see if they match the number on their boxes, and make piles. There is one pile for throw out, one for keeping, and one for the upcoming yard sale.

Nearly an hour later, we are finished. We close the pantry doors. We feel we have climbed Mt. Everest.

After dinner I walk past my seven-year-old daughter Liz’s room. I pause at the door, and then leave. I know her closet is my battleground. I do not have to open her closet door now to know of all the clutter crowded inside. My heart flutters a tiny bit. A sigh lifts from my lungs.

Liz has slowly, over the years, moved items from her dresser into this closet. There are shirts and pants that she has never worn and toys she hasn't played with. These items belonged to a little four-year-old who used to own her room, back before she was born. He can no longer clean and I haven't been able to do it for him. For seven years since his death, as his younger sister has grown, the closet in this room has been a harbor for vessels of the past. The closet can wait. Tomorrow.

Under the Expanded Sky

Educating Merna

Crying With My Ancestors

Opening Grief as a Gift

Living Life from the Graveyard

Surviving the Tinsel

Trees of the Ice Storm

Is There Laughter After Death?

Whatever Happened to the Old?

Out of My Comfort Zone

I Am Not Cheese

As The Sixth Year Approaches

The Dirty Green Van

Judging Pain?

Grief Meets the Answering Machine

Unwinding with a Pen

There is Nothing Wrong with You!

Scared to Death of Dying and Denying Grief

The Night the Christmas Tree Fell

Baking Bereavement Bread

For the Love of Mothers

Bereaved Eyes

A Wealthy Life

The Power of Photographs

Fragrance of Marigolds

It’s true that it has always been tomorrow. But now I know the days are limited. Our house will soon be put on the market; we have made an offer on a gray house with black shutters and a long driveway. Soon I will have to approach my battlefield.

My husband and I have a long list of what needs to be done to get our current house ready. On this list is not to take the old wallpaper off the kitchen walls and paint them. We need to save our time for other projects like repairing rotting wooden columns on the front porch.

Liz and I go out one afternoon and come home to find my husband and other kids, Rachel and Ben, are nowhere around, but we think nothing of it until I walk into the kitchen. The three were to go out to get new doorknobs, but with the look of the kitchen, they've added to their home improvement shopping list. Clumps of the blue-and-pink-flowered wallpaper have been stripped.

Feeling the anger boil inside my veins, I storm upstairs. They are determined to paint the kitchen, against my wishes.

I am muttering to Liz, who agrees with me that “they shouldn't have done that.” And then, suddenly we are both inside her room, standing in front of her closet. “Let’s clean it,” I tell her.

Fueled with the energy anger lends, we start to take piles of clothes from off the floor of the closet. We find my son Daniel’s baby shoes, his blankets, his little shirts and pants. Behind the train set my husband had bought after Daniel’s first surgery is a shoestring with "Daniel" printed on it. I tie the shoestring around my neck and continue. There are get-well notes and then a card for my oldest, Rachel, written by a child. The penciled words say: “Sorry for your lost.”

I know why it has taken me this long to clean out this closet. I knew Daniel’s past was there to greet me in all of the piles of stuff. I had wanted to avoid having to decide what to do with his things –- what to keep, give away, and what to trash. I also wanted to be spared from the countless memories –- those of joy. And sorrow.

Downstairs I can hear my husband, Rachel, and Ben happily stripping the kitchen wallpaper. Let them do what they want, I tell myself. It’s not so bad.

As I reach behind a pile of baby blankets that are on the closet’s sole shelf, my fingers touch an object. Bringing it out of the closet I see a long lost gold wristwatch. When I'd misplaced it years ago, I had searched for it and then given up on ever finding it. The watch had been a wedding gift from my husband sixteen years ago.

I think of what finding this watch in Daniel’s old closet symbolizes. When Daniel died, had time stopped? Over the years, had I put my marriage on a shelf?

Liz and I continue to go through the closet, me telling myself it is okay to throw away stained t-shirts and socks.

“After all, if these were any of our other children’s clothes, we'd not hesitate to throw them out,” I say to my husband.

He thinks this is good rationale and asks if I'd like to paint with him.

I really don't like to paint. But after having cleaned out Daniel’s closet and seeing it look so uncluttered for Liz, I feel I can accomplish any household project.

I dip my brush into the paint bucket and feel a mixture of relief, freedom, and hope.