A personal narrative about letting go and moving on.

The taxi was waiting outside in the driveway, surrounded by the pitch black of a way too early November morning. My bags were all packed, itinerary ready to go, I just needed to make a decision about which coat to bring. Not the big puffy winter one, that would be too much for the plane and unnecessary since most of my time would be indoors. Not the cute, quilted green one because I would be wearing dresses and that wouldn’t look right. The only real option was the red jacket. With a sigh, I took it off the hook, pulled it on and walked out the door.

In the front closet of my parents’ house lived about 30 coats. Twenty nine of them belonged to my mother. There was another coat closet in the mudroom, off the garage where about 10 more jackets lived, these more of the fleece and casual variety. Finally, there was a coat closet in the basement, where old ski coats and bibs and varsity jackets resided. Three coat closets in one house, in which most of the coats belonged to one person; my mom.

Living in a house for 40 years with a husband and having raised two kids will lend itself to accumulating stuff, for sure. Add to that the frigid climate of Western New York, where jackets used to be necessary even in the summer, and it makes sense that jackets would be spilling out of that house on Harper Drive.

Which is how, I suppose, that two of those coats came to exist in my own front hall closet. Because, eventually, something has to be done with all of that stuff that piles up over the years. The red one, a single-breasted pea coat from the early 2000’s, and the purple one, a more recent puffer coat purchase with a fur lined hood.

My instinct in whittling down my mom’s belongings over the past several years is to chuck it. Donate if possible, but otherwise it goes in the trash. I have been trying to clear my own space at home, so that I can have a calm, ordered existence, while dealing with the chaos of life. You can see how three closets full of coats may throw my attempt off kilter. I do my best to honor the objects that meant the most to my mom, keep the clothes I can since we are almost the same size, and say goodbye to everything else with gratitude.

The red coat has been in my front closet for several years and it served a good purpose. It was for those fall days at work when I needed something professional. The problem was that the red coat was an energy-sucking machine. Just catching a glimpse of it in the closet would make me feel tired. Wearing it made me feel a hundred years old. This feeling didn’t exactly register with me for awhile. I kept wearing the red coat even while feeling a general sense of yuck while I had it on. It didn’t make me feel good and it didn’t look good on me. Red should feel powerful and confident and I was the opposite in that coat. It pulled all the color out of my face.

But I kept wearing it. It was my mom’s after all. I was trying to do right by the things she had to leave behind, things that were incredibly hard for her to let go of.

Until that early morning with the taxi. It dawned on me how much resistance I had to choosing the red coat. Wearing it to the airport I took note that my mood had dampened simply from the act of putting it on. I allowed myself to consider what was going on. This coat represented loss. Grief. My mom didn’t want to leave her house of 40 years. She didn’t want to say goodbye to her best friends in the world and a town she absolutely adored. It was forced on her. By me.

The coat was a symbol of all that my mom has had to give up in her life. It held pain, if-onlys, and could-have-beens.

That afternoon, after arriving in the valley of Salt Lake City, I went for a walk in the time before my meetings began. I was wearing the red coat. It was a gorgeous day, with much milder temperatures than I expected out west. The sun was shining on the mountains that looked like a fake backdrop beyond the city. First, I stopped at Temple Square and walked the beautiful grounds. There was a statue representing the pioneers who came by cart and horse to Salt Lake in the mid-1800’s. I stood there for a couple of minutes thinking about bringing young children over those treacherous mountains only to wind up in a pretty desolate place. And for centuries before that, Native American people lived and thrived in the desert and mountains of this area.

Something about the history and the knowing that human beings are incredibly resilient, even amongst our pain and suffering, and the feelings I’d had in the morning putting on the red coat came together and I had a realization: I need to get rid of this coat.

I walked over to H&M and spent an hour trying on every coat in the store. It needed to be warm and something I could wear over a dress for work. I found a delightful, faux-fur, cozy black coat for $50. It felt like something I would never in a million years buy. I walked up to the register and pulled out my credit card.

I wore the furry coat to my work meetings that night. I got at least three compliments. I had never received, not even one, compliment in the years I had been wearing the red coat. I wore the furry coat for the rest of my time in Utah, feeling happy and fun every time I put it on. I felt like a new person. The new coat uplifted my spirits and felt warm and cozy.

I left the hotel a few days later to head back to the airport. I said to my bestie with whom I was sharing the room, “I’m leaving the red coat in the closet behind. I hope the housekeeper can use it.”