Discarded Belongings

I was out doing school shopping this week and passed by the shoe department. The thought occurred to me that I would have bought Luke some new shoes for all the walking he would do on campus. I saw t-shirts I would have bought for him. He loved having new clothes, but usually picked his favorite, most comfortable items and wore them over and over. I teared up a little in the store realizing nine months later it’s still a habit to see something and think, “Luke would love this.” 

 

One of the low points for me in the days after Luke passed was going to get Luke’s clothes from the coroner. We were told they had his things, but when we got there, all we got was his wallet. I asked about his clothes and the coroner said they had been discarded. She said it so casually, so matter-of-factly and with no explanation. I was devastated. Those were my clothes that I bought and paid for, and I wanted them, the last tangible memories of him that day. I wanted that Nike sweatshirt that he loved and those jeans that I bought at Target because they fit him so well (size 29 waist and 32 inseam, hard to find) and his Vans. Those gray Vans were his favorite and really the only shoes he ever wore. He loved them. Back in September, a suicide attempt made him very sick. He threw up all over my car and all over his shoes. I spent forever cleaning that up. And his shoes were the hardest. While Greg was taking Luke to the hospital, I put those shoes in vinegar water to soak and get the smell out and I cleaned his laces. I let them dry out for several days. Luke was admitted to the youth inpatient psych unit so he didn’t come home for a week. I remember coming home after one of our daily parental visits and seeing his shoes there in our kitchen drying out. It’s a vivid memory, one that was horrifying knowing what he did and why the shoes were soiled and yet I felt like a loving mom taking care of his shoes that he loved so much. I knew he’d come back home and want to wear them. And he did. He wore them every day. They were clean and shiny and almost as good as new.

 

How could the coroner know all that? How could I explain why it was so painful to be told his precious belongings were disposed of before I could even say goodbye to them or touch them? I was sad beyond description about the loss of those clothes. 

While the clothes impacted me the most, we also felt a loss that we couldn’t get the cello back right away, or the car, or Luke’s cell phone, all of which were in police custody. It took weeks to get those items back. No one seemed to care that a cello shouldn’t be left in the cold for very long, or that the car was racking up impound fees by the day in the lot it was sitting in, or that we might want to see his cell phone and possibly get more clues into what went on that day. It was very frustrating and only added to our grief. It felt like my feelings were discarded as easily as those items were.

 

In the months since Luke’s passing, I have not wanted to touch his things much. His school backpack remains in his room with all of his notebooks and folders. We haven’t been ready to turn his cell phone off, although it just sits unused. Occasionally we look at it and see if anyone has texted him. He got a text or two on Christmas. The other day our youngest son was cleaning out his toothbrush drawer and brought me Luke’s retainer, asking what I wanted to do with it. It was neatly tucked in its case ready for the next night that he would have worn it. I held it and remembered all the orthodontist appointments and picking him up from school and dropping him back off. We loved our orthodontist and was surprised in a touching way when he showed up at the visitation to pay his respects to a patient he got to know well. That retainer is completely useless now and I could have easily discarded it, but instead I told Ryan to put it in Luke’s dresser drawer. I wasn’t quite ready to let those memories go. Items are powerful reminders, comfort objects, maybe not forever, but for now.