Closets are like treasure hunts. Especially big ones. Especially ones that have been left alone for a while. When you start digging there’s no telling what you’ll find.

I have a closet like that.

About ten years ago Beth asked me to build some shelves in the closet that used to be the clothes closet for our son’s bedroom. She had taken that room over for her scrapbooking, bill paying, tax filing, school teaching, photo organizing, paper stapling, document shredding, craft making room.

“How many shelves do you want?” I asked her.

I could see the squirrels running in her head as she imagined the perfect closet.

“I want shelves from end to end, all the way across from just above the floor, all the way to the top,” she said.

It was not a smooth project. Taking out all the wire shelving and clothes rods was easy, but once we had a blank canvas it got complicated.

My brain works differently from hers. I have the mystical male ability to see things in 3D. Me drawing a picture on a piece of paper did not help her to visualize the end result. I had to make up some mock-up shelving pieces and temporarily attach them to the wall in order for her to get the idea.

“I’m not sure that’s going to work,” she says.

“We can’t physically get more than six useful shelves into this space,” I pleaded.

“Why does the top one have to be so narrow?” she asks.

“It’s above the door. You have to have room for a ladder to reach it.”

In the end, I gave her a closet she was happy with. She had more storage options than the Pentagon. And over the next few years she put it to use. Every shelf. Every inch. Boxes. Organizers. File holders. Plastic tubs. Stackable trays of every description.

By the time she passed away, that closet had become her treasure chest. It was hers, not mine. I never went into that closet. I certainly didn’t put any of my stuff in there. And, eventually, it became one of those be-careful-how-you-open-the-door kind of closets.

She’s been gone for three and a half years and until the other day, that closet has remained just as she left it.

I’ve gone in there a few times. She kept games and coloring books for the grandkids in there. I knew if I needed a marker of some kind or color, I could find one. A roll of packing tape. String. But other than that, nothing changed.

The process of going through your spouse’s stuff is different for everyone, I would assume. It can be emotional. It tugs at you because it’s part of the process of grieving. You see and touch things that belonged to her. The memories can come at you like a tornado, ripping up everything in its path. Other memories are gentler and kinder.

I went through our clothes closet early on. The girls helped me, and we just made decisions. The hall closet came next. The kitchen cabinets. The laundry storage cabinet. The bathroom cabinets. Some of the stuff in the attic.

Little by little her things went away. Things I knew I wouldn’t need or use. Things that had little if any sentimental value to them. I don’t mean to say that I was cleaning her out of my life, but if you’ve been there, you know what I mean.

Everything except this closet.

I don’t know that I can explain my avoidance completely. It’s not like I have been trying to preserve some kind of shrine to her memory. The truth is that I had no idea of what all was in that closet anyway. I honestly think I have avoided it all this time because of the shear volume of stuff that I would have to go through in order to clean it out.

I knew it was going to be, at least, a two-day job and I didn’t want to make time for it. It’s in the back bedroom, out of sight and out of the way. It wasn’t pressing.

But for some reason, I decided earlier this week that the time had come to deal with it. And as it turned out, that closet held some memories and emotions for which I was not prepared.

You see, I thought I was past the tears. I thought I was done with the emotions. I thought that grief had twisted my gut for the last time. I have since found a new me and a new love and life is good.

“This closet will be easy,” I thought.

I was wrong.

She kept so much stuff. There was a box of letters from the summer of 1977, the summer before we got married. She was back home in Selma. I was living in Athens on Lumpkin Street.

There was a journal we kept with the kids from our trip to DC, the summer of 2004. Each of us took turns writing down our thoughts about each day’s adventures.

I found spiral bound composition books full of her notes about teaching and some of her experiences in the classroom. Notes about her cousins out in Oklahoma. Notes about Selma. She always said that she wanted to write a book one day about her life.

For hours I swam in the memories of the forty-five years that we shared. Wave after wave of memories. Some of them were painful. Not everything was perfect. Most of them were tender and easy.

Just seeing all these things in her distinct penmanship was enough to stir up all of our past together. Then I found a small piece of paper with a list on it. Maybe 8 or 10 items. I could tell that it wasn’t old. Probably something she wrote down as recently as couple of years before she died.

It was a bucket list of sorts. Names of places she wanted to visit. New England in the fall. Things she wanted to do. Take a boat ride down the Alabama River. I knew this because these were things we talked about.

I wept for her because of the unfinished life she left behind. I knew there were so many things she wanted to do. She loved her kids and her grandkids to the moon and back. So much more to be done. And then it was over.

Some pretty raw emotions came back to me that day. Marion and I talked about it for a long time. She gets it because she’s been there. The common experiences of our losses are part of what binds us together.

What I found in that closet is a loss that I will always have with me. One that will always, to some degree, define who I am. I am not moving on, as if to say her death never happened. As if her life doesn’t matter. I am moving through the loss. I am taking with me the life she gave me. And I am so grateful that I have someone with whom I can share that journey.

Thank God for boxes on closet shelves.