The Power of Memory

After my last blog about donating wedding dresses and other formalwear to The Emma and Evan Foundation, I was shocked to learn that my mother still had her wedding dress tucked away in a closet. She paid $25 for it to be made in 1958. Thirty years later, she and my dad divorced. Since then, she’s moved that dress to at least six other homes, and has remarried twice.

I couldn’t imagine what prompted Mom to keep the dress, especially decades after that marriage dissolved. With tears in her eyes she said, “It’s my wedding dress; it meant a lot to me. I loved dad, was happy to be marrying him, and had an outfit I loved. Even divorcing didn’t change the feeling about the dress; it hurt that we were divorcing, even though I was sure about it.”

I offered to pack the dress for her while visiting, to assist her in donating it to The EVE Foundation, but she didn’t want help. “I’d like to have private time to go through the psychological process of packing it. I’ll write a letter with it; that’s part of the process of giving it up.” 

There’s power in sentimental things that represent important times in our lives, which sometimes makes it harder to relinquish them. Finding a good home for an item you no longer need can ease the process of letting go.