Erase or Remember?

Today I threw away the past.

Not all of it, naturally; that would take a year or more.

But many, many files from the past 40 years or so. I'm deliberately trying to empty this cluttered space, so my children do not face the work of doing so.

In the process of tearing up and shredding files, I tried to imagine what it might be that my children and grandchildren would cherish, once I am gone, and what they would find burdensome.

As opposed t what I have saved until now simply for myself.

I realized that the box of financial records, containing all of my tax returns since 1971, would probably be of no interest to the generations who follow me so those have now been shredded and discarded.

I also decided that an unfinished short story I wrote about two lovers separated by time and space, who communicate only through messages in bottles cast upon the sea, might be, so I saved that (for now).

Ultimately, everything here has to go.

Just as I will have to go.

The more painful choices will involve which writings to keep. There is too much. I believe I will start shredding all of the reprints and press mentions that used to seem like validations of my writing career. Now they feel like crap taking up space.

The print era has ended.

Thinking about the future, what I want to leave my kids and grandkids is an empty slate, in terms of paper, but I am a long way from that goal. I don't want them to have to sift through all of this junk, and try to make hard choices.

This is my work, not theirs.

In the midst of it all, I encountered a strange package, that I started to rip open, until I recognized the date. It was a badly wrapped envelope around a circular item. It was date 1/3/99.

Inside, I realized, was a golf ball my Dad had written his initials to on the last night of his life.

I stopped tearing it open, placed it back on the shelf, and kept on clearing up my own past.

Still hoping for a better future.