Hoarding or Holding? – Day Forty Eight

Hoarding or Holding?

I’m struggling a bit.

I’ve been fantasizing for a few years about cleaning out what we call our ‘office’ and making it a place where Karl can paint and I – possibly, occasionally (probably never) – might read or write especially when I need some sunshine in the winter.

The reason I’ve been relegated to fantasizing about this for at least the last couple of years is because it entails going through files. And I am nothing if not exceedingly organized, with a file for everything – and occasionally a couple for the same thing. Also called inadvertent redundancy.

Filing Cabinet of Life Events

I started this post out with the intention of reflecting on that razor’s edge upon which I slip and slide (and often cut myself) when going through filing cabinets that seem to hold the history of our life as a family. You see, there is a filing cabinet I’ve moved from law office to law office, with a final resting place in my home office. For many years, it held my active legal files. Then as the kids got into high school and college, it started holding inoculation records, academic awards, test results, and newspaper clippings. Files were created for traffic tickets and leases, contracts and resumés. Some of the legal intermingled with the personal: my parents’ estate files, for instance.

Well, it’s time to move the filing cabinet out of the ‘office’ in order to transform the room into a studio. Studios don’t have filing cabinets. Ok, maybe some do. But not in this house.

And that’s not to say that I don’t have an effective filing system that is shifting to the ‘library annex’ mentioned in one of my previous posts. Nope; given that I’m the one that keeps all the records of all our businesses and family and home life, they’re of course moving with me to said ‘library annex.’ But I’m cleaning out that filing cabinet.

And I’ve been steadfastly refusing to clean that baby out for years now, precisely because of the nature of the files that made their way into it.

Without Proof Does a Life Disappear?

So today, I found myself in tears. Damn it; didn’t want to go there. I’m stuck, feeling the dilemma of deciding what to do with the files documenting Karl’s applications to colleges in 1999. His exchange experience in Norway. His grades at NYU; the details of his management contract in California and NYC. There’s so much history in those files.

Poor Sage – home for the holidays and eager to help me shift the life of the room to a studio… He checked on me at one point and realized I had tears running down my face, ridiculously wondering out loud if I threw stuff away that documented these milestones, would that erase all proof that Karl had existed?

And so I am left with that nagging question of how much to save and how much to feed the shredder.

I’m not inclined to scan this stuff, so that’s not an option. It will either survive as a real-life, tangible document, or it will be gone. <<Poof>> Just like he was. Just like we all are. From documents to artwork to green eyes and dazzling smiles.

Where’s the Edge?

So what is the edge between hoarding the memories in an unhealthy manner and holding on to some aspects of life as evidence for our future ancestors to literally hold and turn over in their hands? And why or for whom do I do either? Or neither?

Sometimes I wish I could just throw it all out with abandon. And then I think about the thousands of people who’ve lost everything in fire, flood, or other disaster, and I’m grateful for the torture these choices represent.

(T-1063)