I was writing a blog about letting go of paperwork but letting go of a box of files seems like a small thing after the hard decision of letting my beautiful cat, my buddy Fiona go. She had hypothyroidism for three years and had finally come to a point where she was miserable and I needed to take her to be released from a body that no longer suported a quality life. I gave her lots of love and a special last meal of poached chicken breast, which she shared with her sister, Bridget. Fionas's special qualities will live on in my book, Shadow Walkers, The Secret Lives of the Shy Sisters. A copy is available for other cat parents visiting the Northshore Veterinary Annex to read. I will treasure the memories of my special friend for fourteen years. Memories are what we never lose.
Deep in my closet is a banker's box full of memories. Well, not really memories. Those are in my head. The records of those memories are in the banker's box. This box is taking up valuable space, space where I could be storing current art projects and materials.
It has taken me almost a year, but I'm ready to let all this paperwork go. There were piles of certificates of completion for continuing education classes that I took to keep my mental health counselor's license current. I needed to keep those to prove that I had completed the eighteen hours of credits every year. I've been retired now for five years, so I'm pretty sure I'm not going to need to haul them out for any audits. There isn't any information in the certificates. They just show where I've been.
Gone. And I don't miss them.
The hardest paper in the box to let go are all the unpublished stories I'm never going to see in print. I took an honest look at them and gave myself a year to think about my decision. There was "Little Wind". I don't see the bones of a completed book. Little and Brown Publishers were right. It's a nice mood piece. There was the story about the teacher with the magical colored glasses. Do I want to put my time into seeing that done? No. There were short stories about volunteering that I sold to Christian magazines. At one time I had thought of putting them together into a book. Do I see myself wanting to put the work in and market it, another book in yet another different niche? No.
They are gone. It's okay. I've written eight books and created party games and activity books. I've packed all my knowledge from counseling into "Twelve Secrets of Happily Ever After Couples: A Love Prescription" and "Blissfully Single, A Single's Guide to Happiness. Five books memorialize the cats in my life.
I'm still writing. I'm writing this blog now! And I still write peace poetry for peace poetry postcards. I still write for my Creekside Writing group on Zoom.
I put aside my resumes for when my children need to write an obituary or my grandchildren need to write a paper about grandma.
The rest is now memories. And memories are precious.
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