Two signs that it's that time of life (stage) [View all]
Sign 1: Still able to mow my grass, but for now because there's been none to cut since the end of last summer. There was a small sample to do last week and lasted half an hour followed by flat out nap time. Soon it will be blazing hot with voracious growth and lots of scheming about doing it in early evening with mosquitos or early morning if no dew. And spread over 2 or 3 days with three hours flat out after each session. The change in stage of life is coming, meaning contracting it out.
Sign 2: The easy parts have been in the can for years - managing the disposition of material effects, cremation with all arrangements and Will. Getting rid of *things* is easy. The harder part is the PAPERS. Probably everybody knows what "THAT BOX" means - or boxES, of crap residue of the lifetime. Probably nobody would miss any of it and will never study it - we want them to or DO we?!1 Yet, it's a pang to trash it - the scribblings and relationships. Yet all that PAPER, so proximate to *trash* in material worth. But all those biographies and autobiographies of Great People, where every dang detail and scrap was hoarded and precious. And us English majors fantasize about having our psyches dissected - by an UNDERSTANDING, COMPASSIONATE interpreter - down to the cell level and beyond to whatever smaller unit comes.
So then the option rationalized into transferring all the paper onto DISCs and shredding the paper - brilliant! This became a mania of *months* - sorting, chronologizing, scanning all Landscapes into Portraits. Not unexpected but worse was the *RE-LIVING* of every scrap of life.
Turned out into two large sections. So it's all done. Two discs. Binders and hundreds of page protectors donated to Habitat. Special carrying case for the discs, and don't DARE scribble anything else. And who knows what to do with the discs.