Toss the papers, but keep the memories

I'm making the house better just for me

Who keeps notes that are so old they were written with typewriters and the paper clips have rusted? I do. Or I did.

Maybe I thought I would become such a famous writer that a museum would want to archive my papers.

I’m 73, and I’m not that famous yet.

In my last post, I wrote about disposing of things that belonged to people we loved. Many of you responded with suggestions and assurances that the more we let go the better we feel.

This week, I have been going through the folders in my file cabinets. Many of them came from articles I wrote for newspapers and magazines over the last fifty years.

Until the mid-eighties, we did everything on paper. We took notes on paper, typed our articles on paper, and collected paper copies of pamphlets, press releases, and articles we found at the library. Saving information or article drafts online was not an option because we didn’t have computers. Scanning was something one did with one’s eyes. AI? Never heard of it. We didn’t gather information from Google; we got in our cars or on the phone and talked to human beings.

It was a different time.

I am still writing and taking notes. I have thousands of files on my computer, but I have held on to some of those paper folders for decades. Why? Force of habit. If someone raised a fuss about what you wrote, your notes were some protection. I might want to write about the same subject again. And I put so much work into those stories that I couldn’t just throw them out.

But now, I see no reason to keep them. I’m tempted to keep one story from the seventies just to show how we did it in ancient times. But what good are notes about the cost of raising a baby in 1985 or a feature on a person who died ages ago? Who wants to read about a restaurant that is long gone?

Every article was an experience I charged into alone. You don’t take your family to work with you, right? Whether I was writing about sister cities, birthing suites, or child abuse, I drove all over the Bay Area and the Oregon coast, knocked on strangers’ doors, introduced myself, and started asking questions.

It didn’t always go well. Remember the guy who insisted on standing in the rain for our interview and didn’t seem to notice I was getting soaked and my pen wouldn’t write on wet paper? Or the artist who got me drunk? Or the flower guy who said he wanted to see me naked? Or the people who ghosted me even though we had an appointment?

Folder after folder sparks more memories. Oh yes, that was the hardware salesman who called me an idiot. That was the story about babies that was so hard because I was never going to have children. There’s the one about bees that I was so proud of.

Here’s the interview about the sculptor who drove me to his workshop and showed me every step of the process. I study my black and white photos. He was so handsome.

Look, I wrote about how to buy a carpet. Why didn’t I see this last week before I picked out my new carpet?

Because it’s ancient history. Into the bin.

These folders are filled with information I no longer need and quotes from people who are probably dead. So, I look at each page, remember, and toss it.

I have kept letters and memos from jobs and freelance gigs that ended badly. Forty years later, it doesn’t matter. Why keep painful memories? Out, out, out!

I have never felt so free to let things go. Maybe it’s all your comments encouraging me to get rid of things that don’t give me joy. Maybe it's my age. Maybe it’s spring. Maybe it’s the eye-opening task of moving things out of the way for the new carpet. I just feel ready.

I am glad to be doing it alone. No one else shares these memories. It feels right to say farewell to those days in private and then enjoy the swish of papers into the bin.

Don’t you agree?

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Update on the living room redo: A guy came out last week to take measurements for my new carpet and blinds. Nice man. Handy with a tape measure. He asked if I was selling the house. I guess that’s a logical conclusion with a woman my age. No, I said. I just want to make it better for me.

If I do sell it someday, the improvements will increase its value, but I'm doing this for myself because I’m the one who lives here every day. I want to feel that soft gray tweed under my bare feet and watch that beautiful “Daisy white” remote-controlled blind go up and down. No more strings!

It’s going to be two or three weeks before they lay the new carpet. Meanwhile, I’m thinning stuff out here, there, and everywhere. The garbage man is going to wonder what’s going on.

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I’m reading a strange but wonderful book featuring a woman who lives alone. This Animal Body by Meredith Walters features a young scientist who finds herself having intelligent conversations with animals. Is she crazy or is she on to something? An adoptee, she is also searching for her birth mother, and she may be in love with a fellow scientist. Check it out.

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How did I end up alone? My first marriage ended in divorce. My second husband died of Alzheimer’s after we had moved to the Oregon coast, far from family. I never had any kids, only dogs. Now I live by myself in a big house in the woods. You can read our story in my memoir, No Way Out of This: Loving a Partner with Alzheimer’s, available at your favorite bookseller. Visit https://www.suelick.com for information on all of my books.