Grief Awareness Day 2025

4 years, two posts. And then today's. As the world has been worlding, I've been focused on so many other aspects of living and grieving and surviving and loving and healing. What I thought this space would become, and what it has been, couldn't be more different. Truthfully, that's the narrative about a lot of things, which is why I present to you the first page of something I've been working on. Grieving more than just those who are no longer earthside, on this Grief Awareness Day. - 🩷 N

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If you open the closet door, you’ll find the wardrobe of a person who doesn’t exist anymore. 

You’ll find stacks of loungewear, spotted with oil stains from food that refused to stay on a fork, and random bathing suit tops and bottoms in fabric cube bins on the floor. On the hangers, which spread across the short side walls rather than across the width of the closet, you’ll find a few items collected over the last five years that haven’t been worn. Mostly dresses, or clothes for the one insanely hot week of the year in San Francisco. The tags are still on some of them, and they do not yet have the smell of laundry detergent, perfume, or lotion from being worn. 

You’ll find wool and velvet blazers - classics but in fun colors, and a few trendy ones that were always tight in the arms, made of itchy poly blends that have started to feel like plastic when you rub a sleeve between your fingers, and one or two might lightly smell worn, lived in, like the smell of a person, not dirty, not clean, but human. With them are a few button-downs in varying quality, from both high and low-end retailers -  striped, patterned, and some plain - many with safety pins to prevent an unfortunate boob gap when worn. Among the shirts are a few blouses saved for “facilitation.”  On the other side, the hangers are full of dresses, slacks, and a few other items held tightly “just in case.” 

The closet is full of just-in-cases. Pants just in case there is dramatic weight gain or loss, as if either happens overnight. Shirts, just in case a room suddenly needs to be painted, or if peplum tops and bib necklaces ever come back in style, and should have been donated a long time ago. Clothes, jackets, and scarves, just in case ethnic pride or San Francisco pride is called for - stretchy athletic fabrics, some smooth, some soft, some the texture of fleece that drags on dry hands or paper cuts. But, mostly, what is left on those hangers is just in cases that need to be let go of,  because these clothes belong to an old version of myself, not the current me who is still being born. 

Thanks for reading, stay tuned for more... maybe. 

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