Four Falls

Around 2am one October morning of last year, from my dark bedroom, I sent my mother the rare, hyper-cryptic text. In all caps:

“DON’T GOODWILL THE BOXES IN THE HOBBIT HOLE. “
 
Send.

A warm-hearted pack rat through and through, I knew she probably hadn’t donated the boxes in my former bedroom, nicknamed the hobbit hole. (Much like Paul was the Walrus, I am the Hobbit.) Crammed with what I kindly labeled childhood trauma — lighten the truth with a little humor, no? — the boxes held SAT prep books and enough plaid uniform skirts to choke not only the horse, but the whole Kentucky Derby.

My concern though, was for one specific item: I needed confirmation that the box containing a ratty, white baseball t-shirt wasn’t gone. The shirt had unfortunately made its way into said box on my last visit home. Probably drunk on pinot and ready to optimize the time I was obligated to spend in my formative abode, I decided it was time to let the shirt go.

I boxed it up.

Threadbare as it was, the graying white cotton was beholden to a history of sadness. With the wine goggles on, I didn’t have to linger on the tacky, collegiate lettering peeling up from the cotton. In more sober hours, I would have realized it mirrored the curling corners of a snapshot strung up in the back of my own mind: my friend was one of the most potent people I knew, and he moved to past tense when we were 21.

My mother texted me late afternoon the next day: the boxes were still there. They’d stay until I was home for Christmas. With mild relief, I contemplated my options. Rather than revel in knowing the shirt was safe, though, I sprung into emotional damage control. I should evaluate my reaction to the situation; why it was waking me so violently; what was to be done — how the daylight hours make us bold, no?

I was undeniably aware that my manic night had roused some cyclical restlessness from dormancy. Not unlike someone poking a rotting floorboard with intensity before looking to the dripping pipe above it, I had suddenly realized it was not the shirt, but the dripping feeling that kept me up: the thought that I had demoted it to Goodwill, and perhaps an afterlife as a cleaning rag, had awakened an unsettling sense of urgency — one last lingering piece of life to be tidied amidst the emotional cobwebs that accompany the dead.
Could it be given away? Should it be?

I didn’t know. Upon reconsideration, it didn’t seem possible to keep it in any way that was humane to my mind. Yet, I also wasn’t sure it should be tossed unceremoniously. Marie Kondo didn’t have any specific thoughts; I checked. Reddit forums also aren’t the most dynamic place to solicit advice for clothing related to dead friends.

Reeling, I decided to take inventory, instead, on why I was craving to reminisce on the past at that moment in time.  Maybe it was the type-A, archivist in me: I’d been playing docent to so many errant, emotional tidbits without actually tending to them. With great amusement —and deep shame — could I rifle quickly through each autumn since my friend died. I was keeping a morbid accordion file in my head, next to bank holidays and friends from kindergarten. But as is true with many old things, the itch to dig at what we know will crumble a bit with pressure, persists.
So I went through one last time.

Fall Number 1:
That first autumn after he died brought me pangs of hurt like foot cramps at night. My daily routines were littered with memories— landmines. I would pack up from the gym, only to become transfixed with watching a patron mash down the backs of his loafers, instead of putting them on properly. Or I’d accidentally lock into the chilly blue eyes of a stranger on the subway, and ride five stops into the next borough. These jolts eviscerated my nerves. I saw him everywhere.

I became fragile in the faces of people I otherwise avoided. I let Post Master at Cooper Union Station hug me. I let the body weight of sweaty strangers hold me as the train ferried our bodies uptown. I rode the actual ferry — to Staten Island — with tourists. As they posed against the Statue of Liberty, I held their camera steady and their purses safe. And while these tiny touches kept me alive, they didn’t ease the tics. It was only once I returned home and lay down in my shoebox apartment that the jolting stopped. The knotty, worn floorboards were cold, and yet they were the only thing that halted the spins.  There was no pinot, those days.

Fall Number 2:
I was better prepared, poised to bat back the grief with busyness when it came. I buried myself in work, burning the candle at both ends to the extent that they eventually collapsed into pools of wax. Without the energy for boundaries, my relationships engulfed me. With open arms, I encouraged the presence of fire to keep me from picking at the smoldering memories.  I couldn’t burn off the cobwebs, his sweet smile still clinging to me, but that didn’t stop me from trying.
If you set yourself on fire enough times, you can prove some tropes are true.

Fall Number 3:
I switched to the opposite coast: I was a fresh, Los Angeles transplant, hoping the sun would heal my charred skin. It did, at least in patches. But the post office, which had once comforted me in New York, would nick me in LA, by way of waking mourning from its slumber. It lost a package mailed to me, which contained one fleece drawstring hoodie. Upon hearing the cardboard box was never to be recovered, I began oozing repressed memories. I told my friends it was a stupid sweatshirt. .

 It wasn’t: it was the brother of the baseball shirt, and it had been assigned the insurmountable task of bottling the New York I left. The hoodie was my armor through those first two falls. I wore it on the couches of my friends, those who stroked my hair and wiped thumbpads under my watery eyes. Upon moving, the sweatshirt was intended to perform double duty: to ward off the Santa Ana winds, and to pinch hit for what I’d left: those strong people who wrapped me in their fire blankets when I couldn’t stop my personal scorched earth campaign. 
I sat on Wilshire Boulevard in the sunshine and cried.

Fall Number 4:
Last year: the relatively distant past. Days after I sent my mother the frantic text, I could no longer deny that my errant, accordion file system was unwieldy. But that was about it. I still hadn’t answered the question of how to wrangle the rusty feelings, let alone figured out what to do with the baseball shirt.

Write about it? Perhaps the process of stringing together four years of memories —a  summation that life indeed continues on after loss — would yield some catharsis better than a shirt to cling to. I wasn’t sure. I definitely wasn’t convinced writing would stop me from waking up at 2am, seeking consolation that the graying t-shirt was safe somewhere, though maybe perhaps not in my own home.

With little else to do, I considered the weather, a process we all love in times of discomfort. It honorably steps in to fill spaces we cannot find words for. Arthritics often blame the change in seasons, those damp cool days, for inflaming their creaky joints. This seemed like a good explanation for the sudden flaring of all the old scar tissue I’d left to fester.

With the September breeze at my ankles, I made one decision that fourth fall: I’d start tending to the sinewy tinges. Despite being dormant and rigid, I could not deny —as it continued to wake me most nights — that the scar tissue was still very much alive. I had a feeling it’d probably stay that way, whether or not it was hidden beneath a ratty old baseball shirt.
I texted my mother, once more for emphasis, and in all caps, just in case.

“PLEASE DON’T GOODWILL THE BOXES IN THE HOBBIT HOLE.”

Then,

“I WILL TAKE THE SHIRT BACK AT CHRISTMAS.”

Send.

-Mackenzie Moore

Mackenzie is a writer based in Los Angeles who currently writes for podcasting and television. Her poetry chapbooks are forthcoming with Variant Lit, Kelsay Books, and Lazy Adventurer. She believes bagels heal most wounds.