100 Days of the Red Coat

On July 16th, 2021 I started a project that is still not quite finished. The intent was to spend 100 days rehabilitating and adorning this red coat that my mother got for me during my first semester in college.

The before pictures are not pretty.

 There's a closet in our house that holds seasonal items. This coat went in there when we moved to this house, and didn't come out until after my mother's death when I was trying to make room for things that I inherited from her. I moved the coat and saw something strange. It looked like mucus trails. Pulling out the coat I discovered for the first time in my life what wool-eating moths do to clothing. And I was furious. All the background noise of grief came blasting forward. Mom got me this coat. Actually, she got me a lot of clothes, but this one felt more like the epitome of her giving than most everything else. She was visiting me for the first time since I'd gone away to college, noticed that I didn't have a coat, and we went straight to the mall to find this one. That day isn't crystal clear, but I remember that it was a good one. And to find the gift ravaged with moth larva slime and holes, still covered in animal hair that I could never seem to get off....it hurt.

I thought: "I have to throw this away now." And that hurt even worse. Look, I've gotten rid of plenty of things that my mom gave me, or that she owned, now that she's passed...I'm not hoarding stuff for the sake of it. But to have to toss something special, something I loved, because I didn't care for it properly? Goddammit. I spent several days knowing I should toss it..and not doing it. Wondering if I could fix it up. It wasn't until I shared the dilemma with my partner (I think while carrying it to the trash) that, with his encouragement, I decided to give it a shot. I purchased a lint razor, and found two special handkerchiefs to help with patching up the larger holes. One I got while shopping with mom (notice a theme?), and the other was my grandmother's. Her mom's. The plan was to embroider one motif a day for 100 days. 100 days of mending, remembering, and I hoped healing.

I ended up taking most weekends off, and some days I spent only five or ten minutes on it. Others, up to an hour. Like I said, it's still not done, but it's close.

Here's a rough timelapse of the process, and I'll share the pictures of the finished coat once it's…y'know…finished.

Through this project I've discovered how beneficial it can be to have a mindful way to approach this loss, instead of weathering the grief wherever and whenever it hits me. Much of the time I'd sit down to stitch, and I'd feel sad, but it was okay because I was choosing to engage with those emotions and memories at that time.

Also, how healing it is to take an object that feels like a weight, and to change it. I added so much thread to this piece, it's physically heavier than it was before, and yet wearing it has a buoying effect on my mood.

I think, in some alternate universe, if the coat had been fine and never wrecked by moths, I wouldn't want to wear it. But in this reality where I've spent so much time and poured so much energy into the coat, it has alchemized a painful reminder of how generous my mother was and how much I took for granted, into a memorial to her, and how even now I can tend to the evidence and memories of her love and care.