J contributed a t-shirt.
"I scrounged some iron-on letters from the dollar bin at Sew-Low Fabric Discount Store in Cambridge, Massachusetts, one day while I was waiting for my mom at the beauty salon next door. Her hair was thinning from chemotherapy, and she was trying to make the best of it. My mom had lung cancer. She died eight months to the day after I made the shirt.
The shirt hangs in the doorway to a closet in my bedroom. Everyone asks where I got it, but nobody asks what it means. One visitor told me it feels like a warning. I suppose it is."
If I'd known JG at the time and if he'd asked me to take a thing seriously, I'd have responded without a blink or a stutter. I value the release and relief of discarding objects much more than I ever value the objects themselves. The only thing I can guarantee I will never throw away is the gold Sheaffer pen that my dead father received on the day he retired (from work, not life).
