The Passing

November 15, 2021

 

Greetings from the encomium,

 We gather here today to lay to rest a dear friend, one that has been nearly as close to me as my own skin.  A friend that has been with me in good times and hard times, even in times of sickness, when I needed comfort.  It is a sad moment to mark the passing, and an opportunity to reflect, and in some way, celebrate.

 It's hard to remember when we first came together.  You know how it is, having a presence in your day so intimate it seems as if it was always a part of your life.  One day I was chilly, and I just naturally reached up to the shelf in my closet and pulled it out, and it was there, as if it had always existed. 

 It was a grey hoodie sweatshirt.  There were strings on the hood that I could pull tight if I wanted to look ridiculous, which I often did.  It had a Nike swoosh on it, but it was far from athletic apparel.  It was cotton, but it was somehow more than the fiber content.  This was a sweatshirt that was meant for greater things. 

 I wore it when I was going to take a nap on the couch, for example.  In fact, it always had that ‘just-napped-in’ look.  But it seemed natural, as if the word ‘disheveled’ had been created for it.

 I used the sleeve to open things, or hold hot things, or wipe my runny nose.  Pull it down over my hand and make it an extension of me.  It didn’t seem to matter if it got dirty, or how it aged, which is a tribute to the color.  Keep that in mind before you choose your next sweatshirt. 

It was a longstanding part of the family.  I hugged my daughter Katherine, who said “Ew.  What is that smell?  Is that your sweatshirt?  Dang it smells like old people.”  That was more than a decade ago.  I don’t know how long I’d had it by then, but perhaps already too long.  I tried washing it more often but maybe the old people smell was already part of the molecular structure.  Which makes me wonder if maybe it was me she was smelling.

 I wore it when I had a cold and needed something heavy to ward off a chill.  I wore it when I was raking the yard, or if I was crawling under a car, or under the house, or across the roof to clear the leaves from the gutter.  It was a multi-season hoodie.  I could wear it under my old winter jacket, the hood up over my old knit hat, and go out and shovel snow.  I could wear it with my raggedy-ass jean jacket, and even if I went to the hardware store it was ok, because it sort of shot past the boundaries of style.  It also paired nicely with my flannel pajama pants.

  In between wearings I wadded it neatly into a ball and threw it on the floor of my closet.  Sometimes after it got washed, and I’m not sure what inspired that, I would fold it and put it on the shelf with clothes of similar character.  Those outcasts of fashion who were close partners with me in my own style.

 When I wore my Nike hoodie it was the only time our dog Max would play with me.  If he saw me wearing it, he would go into a little crouch, his way of telling me: ‘It is on.’  I would roll on the floor and he would grab the cuff of the sleeve and pull, thrashing his head back and forth. 

Sometimes he would push his head into my stomach and force his nose into the big kangaroo pocket in the front.  We would wrestle to a draw; I would get up with dog hair all over my sweatshirt.  And it was the only time I didn’t care. 

 Max is gone now, like the Nike hoodie.  That reminds me of other things that have gone before; that one sock that finally gave up on her lost partner.  The running shorts that went with me for hundreds of miles but were no longer age-appropriate.  That t-shirt that claimed I was the world’s greatest at something.  It suddenly seems unfair, that clothing of lesser meaning should still be in my life.

 This eulogy could have been written the day we made a pile of clothes that were going to the donation box.  I instinctively reached for the sweatshirt and tossed it there, trying not to overthink every piece of clothing that has accumulated around me, like that one shirt that was too big and too plaid, made me look like I was wearing hand-me-downs from some white guy.  (Editor’s note: I’m a white guy.) (Editor’s note: I’m also the editor.)

 I’ll miss my friend.  In fact that began as soon as it left the house on the journey we cannot see.

What’s reassuring is that I know that there is life after this life.  After a stretch in purgatory on the hangers at Goodwill that sweatshirt will be welcomed into its next existence.  That gives me some solace, knowing that someone else, perhaps in another dimension, or county, will have the heavy cotton to layer on when it’s chilly.  Or use it for a runny nose or an oil leak or a smear of peanut butter on the wrong part of a face.

 Perhaps it seems odd to wax sentimental about my old companion, something that seems so ordinary and so replaceable. But it feels right to me to mark its passing into wherever we are expected next.  I like to think if I care just that much about an old sweatshirt, it opens the door to other kindness, which tends to flow both ways.

 

 Hope this finds you believing in the afterlife,

 

David

 

 

 

 

 

Copyright © 2021 David Smith