Good Grief 362

The day of the coats.
I thought I’d done most of the clothes but had completely overlooked the coat cupboard.
I ended up with a mountainous coat volcano that erupted and coat lava spilled down the stairs. I was soon consumed by all these coats emboldened by their release from coat cupboard captivity. Their arms flapped and pawed at their pocket spilling stories. Each one had so much to tell.
There were the apocryphal....
Me: ‘Dad...!*?&! What ARE you doing going out in THAT coat...it’s far too cold for that coat!’
Dad: ‘It’s fine, it’s made from that stuff they use to insulate space rockets’.
There’s the sports epoch...
The golf jackets, first his ... the proletariat golfer who wasn’t having any of this admission by reference and invitation, how low is your handicap and how large is your wallet - stuff. No, it was the jacket that said let’s get together with the mates and play on the municipal and form our own ‘Breakaway Club’. The pockets told of trips to clubs and holidays across the land taken by the gang.
Then hers ... she cottoned on to this golf lark (and got quietly better than him!). If I sat looking at an O.S. map with my little niece in those days I would point to a flag symbol marking a golf course and ask, ‘what’s that?’. To which she would say, ‘Grandma’.
Then there is the immaculately white ‘blackberring’ fleece with it's firmly imprinted memory of days spent picking blackberries and G saying, ‘only your mother could pick blackberries in white!’. It briefly took it’s place, once again, on the back of her chair at the kitchen table.
And she left behind a veritable white snowy mountain of tissues that avalanched from every pocket, never, ever, to be caught short (something I think I’ve probably inherited....mine more snotty and less immaculate).
There’s the snippets of life, the signs of later retirement and tickets to an afternoon cinema trip and receipts for tea or lunch here and there (along with the compulsive collection of sugar sachets and serviettes). I wondered how it was for them in those winter months and for those active lives gradually shrinking.
There was the bizarre - how do you get that many plastic cups in a pocket...and why...and why are they still there?
The smart coat with the order of service of a dear friend still safely tucked into the inside pocket close to the heart.
The ridiculous ex-army and navy surplus coat (fit for fighting on the Russian front) which was always tied in the middle with a bit of thin rope ‘you never know when it’ll come in handy’.
And then there’s the toffee for emergencies.
And the note in the top pocket of the gaberdine...(my Withburga internet seemed to stop for a bit there)
... resuming this some hours later...
The note in the top pocket, like a Paddington note ‘please return this bear/coat...’ written at a time when his hand was much more sure than it became.
I ended up hanging that one back on a hanger in the cupboard.
Bagged everything and with a car load headed off to the hospice at home shop. They had looked after him so well at the end.
All those coats. So many stories. So much life.
How did they manage? Full lives. Lives lived fully.
I’ve got a shoddy, years old, worn out fleece and a couple of waterproofs and can’t help but wonder what that means.
I find it so hard to get my head round.

After the lovely volunteers accepted the bags that overwhelmed their shop I headed to the pub - one of dad’s favourites (inset in the collage) and sat and had a half and told the woman behind the bar that there used to be a barman who always looked out for him when he came in. That’ll be Jimbo, she said, he’s on holiday. I said he was always very kind to my father, please let him know how appreciated that was/is.