Organizing a Past

ORGANIZING A PAST. Bathing and helping my wife in the bathroom is nothing that ever comes easy, but it’s a breeze in comparison to the task of organizing her dresser. This is what they call a “Fiddle Box” in Alzheimer’s parlance. Even a full-time caregiver is limited to what can be done with a person who has lost the ability to focus. The Fiddle Box is a place a patient can be left alone to spend hours screwing things up without doing much harm. For Anna, this is an altar at which she stands endlessly moving bits of her life around willy-nilly; expensive jewels, gloves of Spanish leather, scarves from India. My wallet is missing of a sudden, so this is one of those times when order must be restored and to do so is to pass through our life together. There are a thousand garments in different storage places around the apartment. I am trying to liquidate but can’t bring myself to throw away anything she designed. Anna was a prolific fashion designer. She not only had her signature Anna Huling line; she designed lingerie for Honeydew and Playboy, which was, um, very great.

She led the design team for the “Material Girl” collaboration between Macy’s and Madonna and took on off-brand gigs like the cocktail waitress outfits at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. Good years. Every swatch of voile or lace that passes through my hands recalls a fragment of our too-short journey: how the idea came about; what fabric was chosen; what production looked like; how it sold; the way it looked in the store; and the way it looked on her, my super-cool fashion wife who used her own silhouette as mannequin. And I can drift there - bitterbittersweet - back to the place where she wore it, which clings to the garment like her own company tag and realize how much I miss the Anna she was, her unique brand of even-energy. I watch our wedding video to recall her now, but doing the dresser represents an even stronger mind-scent of that lost being and life.

When we first started dating, she broke it off at one point because of a certain vest I’d worn out to dinner with her. When I pointed out how ludicrous this sounded, Anna told me that I needed to understand how she was a fashion designer and in the business of superficiality. “I’m a writer,” I responded, “and in the business of profundity.”

I won that argument and now here I am.