Ernest tentatively knelt, his joints creaking like the door he had just opened. The walk-in wardrobe was lit only by a bare yellow bulb hanging overhead, and his gloomy mood was doing nothing to alleviate the dim.

“I’m doin’ what I should’ve done years ago,” he called over his shoulder as he shuffled on his knees towards the racks of hanging clothes. “No use complainin’.”

There was no reply from outside the closet.

Ernest fumbled in his pockets and produced a large black bin bag. Pushing his glasses up his nose, he reached for an armful of dusty clothes and indiscriminately shoved them into the bin bag.

It was no use putting it off any more. He wasn’t getting any younger, and the sorting of clothes had to be done. He didn’t need them, so he would give them to someone who did.

Great clouds of dust billowed around him and settled in his thinning hair as he pushed floral dresses, pressed slacks and even a large, floppy hat into the bag. She had never even worn half of this stuff.

The bag was bulging by the time Ernest came to the rack of shoes. He reached for a pair of tattered black heels and froze suddenly, his arm still stretched out in midair. Lillian…

His aging mind struggled to drift back to echoing dance halls and flashes of color that must’ve been party dresses.

He drew his hand closer to himself as if burned. He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing frantically in his parched throat… Lillian had been wearing these shoes when Ernest had first met her.

Ernest had spent years of marriage telling her that clothes didn’t matter, and now it was too late to tell her that he’d just realized otherwise.

He removed his bifocals and furiously brushed at his cheeks with wrinkled hands. He leaned his head on the plastic softness of the bin bag and tried to stop thinking.

He was just a lonely old man, crouching in a closet, doing his best to forget everything. He’d thought throwing away her clothes would dull the pain, but it’d only intensified it.

Somewhere in the corner of their daughter’s attic, carefully wrapped in layer upon layer of tissue paper, lay Lillian’s wedding dress. And in the darkest, most private recesses of Ernest’s mind, carefully wrapped in memories of happier times, was Lillian.

Ernest blindly reached out and grabbed the black heels. He clutched the shoes closer to himself, and slowly shut his eyes.