Jul 12 2008
Retired Life - Cleaning out the Basement of my Mind
Retired Life - Cleaning out the basement of my mind
I’m 61 now and happily married for ten years to my second wife. I was married to my previous wife for eleven years, and…umm, towards the end, possibly not so happily.
In between the end of the first marriage and the beginning of the second were twenty-three years of “single dad-hood” and “almost a bachelor-hood.”
So I will not pretend to have been a monk all those years. There were five significant relationships that were each of two-to-three year’s duration. The basement of my mind is full of memories and my (actual) basement is full of memorabilia.
So…is it normal to hang on to old memorabilia to go with the old memories? I have a footlocker full of photos, letters, Hallmark Cards and miscellaneous souvenirs of various adventures with various ladyfriends. ( just can’t bring myself to say “girlfriends” anymore.)
I don’t think my current wife would ever want to go through this stuff. She has absolutely NO INTEREST in MY memorabilia of relationships past. Come on now-why would she? And my adult children couldn’t care less about my “previous lives.” Grandchildren? Only if one of them turns out to be a fiction writer. Ha Ha.
Why am I holding on to this “stuff”? Do I think someday I will “catalog” it all? No.
Do I think (or hope) that any of my previous “ladyfriends” will want to claim any of this stuff some day? No.
Do I want it passed down in my last will and testament? No.
If my current wife survives me, do I want her to have to try and sort out what, if anything, is in that “footlocker” that should be held onto or given to the kids? No.
So…it is time to clear it out! Time to make a haul to the landfill!
(But first, I need to go through it all and see what I want to keep…)
