I cut three hearts out of the dark blue fabric, one for myself and one for each of my sisters. I avoided the slightly dusty spots, the kind of spots that can come from kneeling in the soil. I threw away the rest of the sleeve. Such an easy thing to do—lift my hand, hold it over the trash can, loosen my fingers, let it go.

In a sense it was two different fabrics. The sleeve was not complete, hadn’t been neatly ripped away at the seam but cut in a slightly jerrymandered way. I wonder who cut it? Probably not my mother. Holding it weighed me down, created a black hole in my center that wanted to suck me in. This was not just Papa’s wedding suit. It was his shroud, the faint traces of dirt from a Tennessee hillside.

“I heard the roar of a plane,” the March, 1950 newspaper reported a witness saying, “and then saw the ship flying at a high rate of speed, and apparently out of control. Going west at first, the plane then turned quickly and headed back in the direction from which it came. It then started spinning and nosed down – then it started to climb. There was a loud noise like an explosion and three black objects appeared to have been flung from the plane.” the newspaper reported. (Quincy Brown quoted in the “Bristol Herald Courier”) This sleeve had been part of one of those black objects, my father’s body.

Last summer I opened the file box holding various bits of memorabilia from my parents’ lives. My daughter-in-law sat caressing the sleeve on her lap as I emptied the box. I couldn’t get beyond that sleeve however. The brightly colored wrapping paper from shower and wedding gifts, diplomas and certificates of honors were not enough to spur me to action—to clean out the box and disperse its contents. I packed it up again and put it away. It weighed too much.

But some day I will move, I know, and don’t want to leave my life for someone else to clean up. I steeled myself to once again face the past. I first sorted through boxes of old pictures and papers from my mother’s and grandparents’ lives, slimming down my collection. Not a hard job, but then I had to face this, the last of the boxes. I went into full efficiency mode, the only way I knew to do it, and dug in.

It is empty now. My father’s report cards from elementary and high school, which I didn’t know I had, are safely stowed in plastic sleeves in a notebook. Old greeting cards, wedding invitations, post cards from Mother’s friends—gone. Mother’s travel journals are set aside to read or skim and her account books to comb for interesting details before discarding. No one in the next generation will want them and I may be the only one interested enough now to see what I can learn from them.

My collection is slimmer, leaner, lighter, and my feelings match except for that sleeve. I’m playing dodgeball with a headache. I’m not surprised. Facing that particular past always takes me by surprise—the impact it still has after 76 years. Each time I face it though, I like to think I can lay a small piece of it to rest. The fabric hearts remain. They make me smile. The arm in that sleeve held me many times, and I surely rubbed against the fabric, feeling completely safe and at peace. That too is part of the past, a part I hope to hold forever.