A recent, rainy Saturday afternoon convinced me that it was time to tackle the closet that Jody and I mockingly called the Hotel California – stuff checked in, but it never left. I opened the door and wanted to scream, overwhelmed by the piles that needed sorting. I stepped back, took a deep breath, and dove in.

There were boxes of clothes – laundered and folded – waiting to be worn again. Sadly, they no longer fit; so, they went into the clothing bin in our building’s recycling room. Somebody will be able to wear them.

Buried in the back was a set of golf clubs that hadn’t seen the lush grass of a rolling course in nearly forty years. Out it went. I also found an electric keyboard that I didn’t remember. It must have been important to Jody. I gently unzipped its tattered case only to find a tangle of wires. There was no way I could repair it. That went out as well.
I fought my way through the long-forgotten souvenirs of a life together. Suddenly, at the bottom of the pile, there it was – a flattened pancake of brown fabric. I recognized it immediately and laughed at the memories it still held.

It had started out life as a brown fedora. Jody loved that hat and used to wear it all the time, even inside the apartment. I thought he looked quite dapper. Eventually, the hat started to wear and Jody found another hat. Even so, the fedora maintained its honored place on the shelf of his nightstand.

In April 2016, we adopted a beagle we named Sugar. She had been rescued from a puppy mill where she had been locked in a cage for over four years and bred for the puppies that medical researchers so craved. We soon discovered that Sugar had never learned to play. When we brought her home, we tried to coax her to chase a ball or participate in a tug of war with a length of rope. Sugar was content to sit back and sneer at our attempts.

One day, I heard Sugar scuttling down the hallway into the living room where Jody and I were watching television. In her mouth, she clutched that brown fedora. She nestled on the floor, her paws on the brim and her chin resting on top. Jody caught sight of his hat and the battle was on.

He reached down and grabbed at the hat catching it at the brim. However, Sugar was too fast. Her mouth clamped down on the hat and, at long last, a real game of tug of war was on. Jody won that battle and returned the hat to its sanctuary on the nightstand. Sugar bided her time. Jody would go out and Sugar would grab the hat and carry it back to her resting place. She learned to sit on it so that Jody wouldn’t see it right away. Once he did, a new tug of war ensued. The hat started to show the scars of their battles – creases and tears and the stains of dog drool – marring its shape and fabric.

Sugar had her triumph when Jody ceded his ownership of the hat. She carried it everywhere with her. At night, she clutched it close as if it were one of the puppies she never had the chance to rear. From time to time, she would carry the hat to Jody hoping to entice him into another round of snatching and pulling which Jody gladly joined. The hat continued to take a beating.

After Jody passed, Sugar was as lost as I was. She would carry the hat around searching for him. She would look at me and I would ask her if she wanted me to play with her. Nothing doing. I wasn’t Jody. She would trot off to hide the hat in her bed burying it under the cushions. At some point, she understood that Jody’s absence was permanent. She started to bring the hat to me so we could play. I don’t think it was the same for her.

Sugar passed in late 2022. I didn’t have the heart to dispose of the hat so it went into the closet. Now that I’ve found it again, I’m ready to let it go. The memories of Jody and Sugar and the hat are safely stored in my memory and continue to fill my heart with joy.