I folded one of my daughter’s old cardigans and couldn’t put it in the donation bag

Dear Delyara, It doesn’t fit her anymore. That isn’t really the issue. The issue is that it still carries her. Not physically, obviously. But emotionally. The little shape of the child she was, the mornings when I buttoned it for her, the years where she reached for my hand more easily, the age when being needed was simpler and less conflicted. I put it in the bag. Then took it back out. Some things are not clutter. They are proof that time happened in your own hands.