I think I am possessed. Either that or I have a penchant for persecution. One way or another, I find myself deep into yet another project.....one that seems to be a bottomless pit. Perhaps I have a possible penchant for personal-project persecution?
Some life lessons have left me with an awareness that I have too much stuff in my possession. (That word keeps cropping up, doesn't it?) Over the years, I've seen the results of holding on to "stuff" and the effects it has - both on the keeper of the stuff and those who must deal with it at a later date. I have arrived at the conclusion that it is both time and OK to let go of said "stuff", "stuff" being papers and pictures, mostly.
For years, I thought that being a "good" mother meant keeping the papers of childhood, probably because my mother kept just about every scrap of paper that I ever wrote, touched, or had my name on. After my parents sold their homes, I inherited all of the stuff my mother kept. She kept each letter I wrote home, beginning in college and through my married years until her death. Going through the scrapbooks, file folders, and boxes was like a cinema of my life with report cards, art work, newspaper clippings, concert programs, etc. She also left me with a life-time of photographs and a life-time supply of greeting cards, post cards, and note cards. I think the only time I ever visited this "stuff" is each time Capt. SO and I moved. I would open boxes, stir up the stuff, put the lid back on the box and ready it for the moving truck.
Well, the truck has stopped here. I've finally grown up enough to understand that keeping said "stuff" does not perpetuate memories, nor invite them. My mind holds the memories, sometimes more distinctly and vividly than by looking at or holding papers and photos. I've also finally arrived at the conclusion that, in the future, my children do not need to sort through or handle all of the "stuff" that I deemed "must save".
Before all of the weeping and wailing of the saints that have gone before me rise up and label me awful because I am sorting, throwing and shredding, please know that while I am, indeed, getting rid of grocery sack after grocery sack of paper and redundant photos, I am not throwing the baby out with the bath water. While I am greatly reducing the volume of my childrens' documents, school papers, certificates of achievement from pre-school through college, I am also saving that which might be entertaining or useful to future generations. I will be scanning everything, plus keeping a minimum number of "hard copies". The scanned items will go on to discs and each offspring will receive a disc plus I'll put disc copies in our safe deposit box. I am not wiping out evidence of existence, just reducing the results of that existence. I have finally realized that it is OK to let go of the greeting cards Capt. SO and I received from the birth of each child and I have now become comfortable with the notion that by throwing away the sympathy cards I received at the death of each of my parents, I have not diminished my love or respect for them.
By the truck stopping here, future generations will not have to load my boxes into the moving van. I will have accomplished that task for them.
Possessed? Possibly.
Ancora imparo
