Shredding Memories.....

Today was a cool cloudy Tuesday.  The kind of Summer day that makes me feel more inclined to take on jobs I usually defer.  Today's chore was cleaning out file cabinets and shredding.  

When we moved almost four years ago, I hired a shredding company to come out after burning out two shredders.  Understand that Tom was a man born  almost a generation before me.  He was raised on paper.  Every kind you can think of.  He was a business owner and his business was Insurance.  You can imagine the paper that field of work can generate.  He came to know and be comfortable using computers.  He did all his banking online.  Bill Pay was his savior!  Bill Pay saved him 6 hours of careful record keeping and hand writing checks once a month.  Always on the 20th.  Not a day before and not a day later.  But no matter how hard I tried I could not convince him that he did not need to keep a paper (hard) copy of everything he did.  Thus the files soon began to refill after the day we had the shredding company out.  There were also records/papers he just refused to part with.  Like every single Mortgage he ever had.  For every single house he had ever lived in.  They were numerous.  Every Bank statement for years and years resided in file drawers and boxes.  Every lab test going back 25 years.  Every Explanation of Benefits from BC/BS.  Are you getting the picture?  

Today came and I didn't have to be anywhere.  I decided to start on this formidable task.  I stayed at it for seven hours.  I accumulated 5 garbage bags of shredded documents and old 
records of who knows what.  What I could recycle I recycled.  But in the flurry of the papers and the whirl of the shredder there were Memories.  A sticky note with a jotted message.  A note saying he had gone to the store.  Our signatures together on a Mortgage application.  Applications that I had filled out for him when writing became more difficult for him. Now those papers slowed me down and I must admit I took my time remembering.  It was good.  When I remembered enough I slipped those papers into the jaws of the shredder.  Never to see them again,  but to know that all those moments are in my heart as years lived well.  The other papers went in much faster because they had nothing to do with me and had no hold.  I now know exactly where all the old Tax Records are.  I have enough room in my desk file that I can easily slide my hand in to slip in a necessary paper.  I have more room in the closet, but my heart is more full.  

Until Next Time.....Always,
Kathleen

Oh an added bonus.  A handwritten card from my Mother.  A thank you note following the 90th Birthday Party we gave for her.  Filled with soft and tender words that she found impossible to utter, but she could express in writing.  That is safely locked in my fire proof safe.  Gems among the rubble.