A dirty shirt

There's a moment that I would guess every military spouse knows all too well. You half heartedly decide to finally attack that growing mountain of laundry and while sorting the whites, the darks and all that fall somewhere in between you find the last piece of clothing worn by your husband before he left for parts unknown.
I don't know about other spouses, but I usually bury my face in said item and inhale that lingering scent before throwing it into the wash. For me, that moment came last week, when all the other laundry from Greg's visit home had been washed, dried, folded and placed in a suitcase that will live at my parents' house until Greg comes home because we simply don't have room for it out here in our trailer.
Finally, last week, I got around to unpacking the small bag I took up to Baltimore and added those dirty clothes to the laundry mountains in the hall way. There, with my favorite jacket and my "date night" dress were Greg's clothes from our night out. I brought them home with me because there's no need for "civvies" over there.
The dress shirt, one of my favorite things to see my husband wear, still smelled like him. Greg doesn't usually wear cologne and our night out was no different. The smell that lingered there on the collar was simply the smell of my husband. It's familiar, safe, clean ... intoxicating.
I buried my face in the shirt and cried my eyeballs out.
I still haven't washed that shirt. I folded it and put it up on the bookcase-style headboard of my borrowed bed.
When I was a little girl, my grandmother died. My mom gave me one of her house dresses and I slept with it for months. I loved inhaling that scent -- it was a mix of soap and fried chicken and some indescribable something. But, after a few weeks, that smell faded and I had to try really hard to find even the faintest whiff of my grandmother on that house dress.
I haven't slept with Greg's shirt. I have picked it up and inhaled that sweet smell from time to time. I know that like Grandma Bessies's house dress, Greg's shirt will soon be just another dirty shirt atop a mountain of laundry.
I miss my husband.