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November 3, 2007

STEPHANIE SALTER: Filling the shoes — and jackets and hats and PJs — left behind

By Stephanie Salter

TERRE HAUTE — The day after my father died, our family burst into a spontaneous clearing out of all the depressing traces of his illness — the pharmacy full of prescriptions, the oxygen generator, the hospital bed and the crates full of paraphernalia that a phalanx of medical professionals threw at his cancer over five long months.

In the flurry, someone suggested we all put on some item of Daddy’s clothing and one of his nine zillion hats and caps.

We have a photo of that effort, taken in the back yard of my parents’ home. Nine of us are gathered beneath a big maple tree my father planted in the late-1950s, its bright yellow leaves just beginning to fall.

Without knowing the why behind the photo, a person would assume this was some happy family reunion on a sunny autumn day where everyone wore a hat. All of us are smiling, even my mother whose back literally was broken by months of intensive caregiving.

Not one of us wanted my dad to die, none of us was ready to let go of him. But our smiles, I believe, illustrate the visceral identification each of us made with him. They reflect the release he must have felt as he left his besieged body and moved on.

With his hats on our heads, his jackets and shirts on our backs, we are flesh-and-blood totems to him and the clan he helped create.

Three years have passed since that photo was taken. I am still wearing my dad’s clothes. Only now, I do it for different reasons — and they are all about me.

Dad’s clothes — and hats and watch and handkerchiefs and socks — are part of a growing wardrobe I call “Clothes of the Dead.” If this sounds morbid or irreverent, I’m sorry. Before I started losing pieces of my heart with the deaths of relatives and friends, I might have agreed. Now I know “morbid” is in the eye of the beholder, and one person’s irreverence is another’s veneration.

I don’t remember when I began the collection, but most of the clothes were given to me by people left behind, the daughters, sons, siblings, spouses or great-good friends who, like me, loved the person who died.

When my friend Mary Edith lost her partner in life to Alzheimer’s, she gave me a pair of Elaine’s opal earrings and reminded me that Elaine and I were the same size in almost everything, including our narrow feet. In the eight years since Elaine passed, I have nearly turned a pair of her cream-colored loafers and her heavy Irish knit sweater into a uniform.

When my pal Bill Rigney died, his daughter, Lynn, invited me to go through his closets and cabinets and take whatever I wanted to keep his memory close. Rather than things from his long career in Major League Baseball, I chose some sweaters, a sports jacket, a half-dozen snazzy handkerchiefs, a cocktail pitcher and monogrammed hi-ball glasses.

I also took a pair of Rig’s cotton pajamas and a blue robe that he wore in the hospital until he could no longer get out of bed. The fabric is soft and worn. Whenever I’m feeling prickly and uneasy in my skin, those PJs are like a tender hug.

Susan Mead’s purple challis scarf performs a similar little miracle.

An administrator at NASA Ames Research Center, Susan shared the same hobby I did, performing as an extra for the San Francisco Opera. Over several years and productions, we became good friends.

When Susan’s husband, Bill, another Alzheimer’s patient, died and Susan learned her ovarian cancer had returned, our operatic stage escapes took on much more meaning. During her final weeks in hospice in Palo Alto, she taught me one of the most valuable lessons I could possibly learn: A huge part of dying gracefully is living gracefully.

Susan’s stepdaughter, Ann Mead, did as Lynn Rigney Schott had done, opened the closets, cabinets and bookshelves and said, “Take what you want.”

Along with music reference books and opera libretti, I have several pairs of Susan’s earrings, two of her elegant dresses, some high-heeled shoes and a wonderful gray wool coat that comes with a lightweight, waterproof, lavender overcoat.

And, of course, I have her scarves. Velvet ones that she wrapped around her neck when she was dolled up and headed into the Opera House as a spectator instead of a performer; a soft, nubby knit shawl that Ann sent to keep me warm long after I moved home to Indiana.

My favorite, though, is the purple and green floral challis that I mentioned. (Susan never met a purple she didn’t like.) It spans every season and turns the most mundane black turtleneck and pants into an ensemble. Once, at a restaurant in San Francisco, a man offered me $100 because his wife had “fallen in love with that scarf.”

More than a few times, when I’ve been filled with anxiety or happy nerves before an important event, I’ve draped Susan’s purple scarf over my shoulders like a warrior’s mantle. It calms me and makes me feel protected and prepared for anything — just the way my dad’s watch does.

Of all Dad’s things that I love to wear — and there are scores — his watch possesses the most power. I fastened it to my arm before he died because it had grown too tight on his wrist as fluids began to fill his body.

From several feet away, Daddy’s watch resembles a Cartier tank watch — or so I’ve been told — but it has no such fancy pedigree. It’s a Timex with a wide black cloth band and a few scuff marks on the crystal. In a really quiet room, you can hear the seconds tick away.

Whenever I have to give a speech or make some other public appearance, I wear Dad’s watch to fortify me. Same with when I fly or figure I could use a little extra luck — like when I applied for my mortgage loan here in Terre Haute.

Sometimes, I wear it just to have it near me so I can touch it. This is not like touching my dad — nothing is — but it is like connecting to him on a level that requires no words.

Dad used to wear the watch on his wrist, now I do. But as with all Clothes of the Dead, ownership is not mine. Whenever I wear them, for whatever reason, they are still Elaine’s sweater, Rig’s pajamas, Susan’s scarf and my father’s watch. I’m just holding onto them for awhile.

Stephanie Salter can be reached at (812) 231-4229 or stephanie.salter@tribstar.com.

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