I had to get this one task just right. I had to.
The autopsy took a week. I played out the gruesome things they were doing to him. I still do, sometimes. I had to choose his final clothing once Billy was released to the funeral home.
I always told him that he had more clothes than a supermodel, but Billy didn’t have racks of designer clothes. Nope. He shopped in bargain bins, vintage shops, the boy’s department at Sears. Jeans and a well-selected t was his uniform.
If you’d open one of his drawers, there’d be expertly folded underwear, socks and shorts arranged in one of those solved sliding puzzles. He said he learned to do that in the Navy. I owned one dresser, Billy had four. One of our two bedrooms gave way to his wardrobe.
I knew he’d hate wearing a suit. For a few days, I just stood in his clothes room and stared, soaking in his scent, hoping the choice would become obvious, thinking this couldn’t really be happening, praying that I’d hear him come in through the front door, see me and say, “You are crazy. What are you doing?”
I started with his favorite jeans, a pair he found in a vintage store that had the well-worn outline of a tin of chaw marking the right rear pocket. He only wore white Jockeys, so that was easy, and his Docs, the ones I bought him seven or eight Christmases ago. I knew a t-shirt wasn’t right, though.
There was one button down shirt he loved—off-white corduroy covered in tiny navy blue five-point stars—that had a Western feel with a bit of whimsy. I carefully folded up everything, put it all in a shopping bag, and handed them over to the man who’d been put in charge of Billy’s funeral.
There are things no one should have to do, but when you free fall into something where there is no choice, you move. Picking out the last outfit of the one you love is one of those things that just sticks with you, stings every time you think of it, and on this seventeenth anniversary of waking up to find Billy, well, it can feel as if no time has gone by at all.
When I saw the outfit again a few days later, Billy was wearing it. And I knew I’d done at least one thing right.