A purge

As we are moving house soon, the Great Clear Out has begun. Rennie MacIntosh said something along the lines of, ‘Have nothing in your house that you do not believe to be beautiful or know to be useful’ and we have adopted that as our moving mantra. Alan and I are spending a couple of hours a day boxing-up and sorting and only occasionally disagreeing on what constitutes usefulness and beauty.

It was in the MacIntosh spirit that I opened my wardrobe and underwear drawers last week, with charity shop bag, recycling bag, recycling-by-me-into-patchwork bag, and rubbish bag to hand. I was ruthless. Out went:

- anything that doesn’t quite fit (exception: wedding shoes, too small now thanks to Tamoxifen)

- anything that I haven’t worn for more than a year (exceptions: wedding dress, assorted evening dresses, cream Jasper Conran suit, as they just haven’t had an opportunity to emerge from the wardrobe. Please feel free to invite me to a glamorous event.)

- anything that isn’t quite me (I can’t be the only person who buys clothes for the person they sometimes want to be rather than the person they are)

- anything tatty or worn.

I was brutal. (I now have less than 20 pairs of shoes.) I felt good. I could close my drawers, and I could see what was in my wardrobe properly. And yet, when I was done, I wasn’t quite satisfied.

I had a break and then I went back to my lean new wardrobe. And I pulled out a few more things for the charity bag.

They fitted. They were ‘me’. They’d been worn in the last year. They were in good nick. But there was another criterion I had forgotten to apply in my clear out: I needed to get rid of anything that reminded me of the bad times in my dance with cancer. And there were half a dozen tops that I realised I think of as my ‘cancer tops’. They were comfortable for sitting in a chemo chair for a long time, wide or stretch sleeved to accommodate a PICC, stretchy or loose for the cancer-half-stone. Because of that, I wore them pretty much constantly for three or four months last year. Because of that, they come with uncomfortable memories. Because of that, they went into the charity bag.

It’s not that I want to forget my dance with cancer, although I can understand why some people might want to forget theirs. For me, I have learned and grown as much as I’ve suffered, and it matters to me that I don’t lose that. And it matters to me that I remember, so that I can talk to and help others where I can. It’s more that there are some things that I don’t need to be reminded of. And I like to think that, a few weeks from now, someone rooting around in a charity shop will find one of my tops, turn to her friend, and say,”Look! This will be really comfortable to wear in hospital, and it should be able to cover the PICC up!” Stranger things have happened.