Triggered by a shirt

Since coming home from this past weekend where Mike was constantly in my thoughts, I have had random thoughts of our time together creep in my head.
Tonight I am in bed trying to get to sleep and I remember when he first came home to live.  I remember his face..... his glowing face.  I wanted to have a fresh start.  As soon as I had all his immediate medical needs addressed, I set about cleaning him. Getting bed baths in a nursing home just can't seem to get you clean enough.  Here at the house I could turn on the space heater so he wouldn't get chilled, I could cover him with soft blankets, I could use soft wash clothes and scented soaps with a lot of lather.  If you've never bathed someone you love, I highly recommend it.  I was always the one giving the bath of course, but there really isn't anything more intimate.  You might think sex is, but when you lovingly wash and take care of someone's body with love it surpasses everything else.  I trimmed his nails, I soaked them and filed them.  I changed his gastronomy tube.  I changed his trach ties.  I cut his hair.  I shaved his face.  I kept him naked.  To tell the truth we were both naked a lot.  Not vavavoom naked, more like nudist colony naked.  Spending all our time together ONLY in a nursing home room...... it was cramped and smelly and people coming in and out at random times.  That first day especially was just about freedom.
Mike couldn't raise his arms above nipple line and he couldn't put his palms up without pain.  This made putting a shirt on painful.  So I did for him what I did for my daughter.  I cut the back of the shirt straight up the middle. I bought packs of the softest white t-shirts I could find and I cut the backs out.  Since he couldn't move but he could still feel, soft was always my goal.  Oddly, he would ask for rough wash clothes every now and then.... must be a guy thing.  All his clothes from before living in the nursing home were in storage.  His friend brought them over and I went about washing them and cutting the backs.  There was one shirt that when it came time to cut, I just didn't. At the time I couldn't tell you why, I just hung it back up as a whole shirt and he never wore it.  I know why now.  At the reunion I met this beautiful, sweet woman named Gabrielle.  She had a picture of when Mike was at his last reunion 10 years ago.  Mike knew it would be his last reunion.  This is also when he told the majority of his friends of his diagnosis.  She posted the picture on Facebook and tagged Mike so that I would find it. (remember I had been drinking so this was the easiest way)  I later looked at the picture and saw what he was wearing.  The shirt that I couldn't cut, that I hung back up in the closet that he never wore, the shirt that I kept after he died when I got rid of all the others.... that shirt is the one he is wearing in that picture.  How strange is that?  The shirt has been hanging in my closet since he died.  I plan on keeping it there but I moved it to be mixed in with my own clothes.  Weird reason.... but I kind of feel like I want it touching my clothes that I'll be wearing.