I had this sense that I was participating in making the world into a place that was not shaped by Doug, that would continue without him. That I was undoing the evidence of his life. That undoing felt like betrayal. This has been a theme for me in grief and loss, the sense that moving or changing or getting rid of a loved one's possessions is transgressive.
In these moments we remember the years that brought us to this instant. And somehow, paradoxically, we remember what is yet to come – much as, in church, we remember that Jesus is going to return.