“Do you suppose I would ever wear this?” My sister-in-law held up a pink cluster of chiffon and lace. It was a “semi-formal” evening gown as my mom would have called it. She would have worn it on some long-ago New Year’s Eve when she and dad dressed to the nines and went dancing for the evening. The occasion was undefinable. The “girls” as she would have called us–5 of us–were gathered in my parents’ bedroom going through her closet the afternoon of her funeral.
My mother, Mary Jo was quite a character; challenging for me as her only daughter, she was intense, wounded and loving and funny. And she was a clothes’ horse. For years, my mom made clothes for herself and me as well as dance costumes for kids attending tap dance classes. I hated those costumes as I had to be the model for them. Calling for me to come in to try it on (with five kids as a stay-at-home mom, she was often on a narrow deadline), they were hot and sticky and uncomfortable. One Easter, mom made pink dresses for me and four of my cousins, fluffy and dainty with black velvet belts.
A devout Catholic, Mary Jo dressed up every Sunday to attend Mass. In the early days, there were hats and stockings and heels and white gloves of course. There was also often a new dress. Usually, pink. For my mother loved to wear pink. To look at her closet as we threw it open that October afternoon was to see a sea of every shade of pink one could imagine. As a teenager, and a Socialist college student and as an adult, I avoided pink. It was “her” color and I needed to differentiate. Black was my style and for years, she urged me to “lighten up” and wear some pink!
Mom had died of lung cancer, and we were all in South Texas for the funeral. When someone suggested that they wanted to look at my mom’s clothes, my dad immediately encouraged us to go through the closet and take what we wanted. Initially, this seemed strange–too soon–but my sister-in-law and I looked at each other and knew that this was exactly the thing to do this afternoon. We knew that mom would have loved it. My daughter took out the jewelry box to look at the jewelry; this had been a tradition she and my mom and I did on every visit. The others began to select the outfits we wanted to try on.
We laughed so hard, trying on this dress and that—laughing at the thought of mom wearing that kind of sheer top, remembering how beautiful she looked in the pink tea length gown (we all agreed that this needed to be my daughter’s dress. She still has it). I was not a doula for end of life then, but I loved the ritual of this, the connection of story with my mom even as we created new ones in the hoots and laughter. It was lovely.
I did not take any of my mom’s clothes. But I had the gift of being a part of her final outfit. Several years before she got sick, my mom and I were visiting and talking about how much she disliked the formal “church dress” way that people were laid out in their coffins. “I want to be buried in a pink negligee”, she said. I promised her that this could be arranged and never thought of it again until she died.
Mary Jo was a planner; she was organized and detail oriented. She had selected all the hymns for her funeral, named the pallbearers. Chose the readings for her funeral mass. So, when she died, I was quite sure that she would have purchased the pink negligee. The night before I flew to Texas, I dreamed of looking for the negligee in all her closets, pink tissue paper cascading over me as I futilely tried to find the lingerie box from The Style Shop, her favorite boutique. When I got there, I had the same experience. There was no pink negligee to be found. I looked at my brother and said, “We’ve got to go get that negligee.”
It is important and the right thing to tell our loved ones what we want before the end of life. It is healing for both the dying and the living to have intimate conversations about these choices. It offers a sweet clarity and deepens memories for the future.
I found the negligee. A soft pink gown with a lace trimmed overlay. She would have been pleased. My brother added the soft and fuzzy pink booties for her feet. In this way, we said our goodbyes to our mom. As did the handsome pallbearers, 6 grandsons and nephews in their pink shirts.