Death Cleaning

No one has died.  But my husband had heard of the book The Gentle Art of Death Cleaning from me when I read it a year ago.  He decided it made sense to go through all his writings from the last 25 years and deep six those of no use to anyone but himself at the time he wrote.  He did keep some that he thought his grandchildren or great grandchildren may want to read some day.  As he says he would like to know more about his great grandparents but there's nothing in writing about their lives other then what you can find with genealogy research.

He printed out what he saved and I read and edited it.  Now I have it downloaded on Blurb and am using Bookwright to make it into a book.  It will be a long process.

After he completed that task he went through all the letters I wrote to him, re read them, offered them to me to re read, I declined.  They have now been trashed except for one that I did read.  

In reading it it brought back memories of college and a decision I had to make about studying abroad in Japan.  It didn't happen.  The course work didn't fit my Urban Studies major plus it was out of reach financially for my parents.  I think back now to why it was so attractive to me and I think it was because of my childhood spent in the Philippines. As I said in my letter I thought I'd have a chance to travel back to Dumaguete where we lived.

In the rest of the letter I wrote "I guess there are a lot of things in life that a lot of people would like to do but never get a chance to.  And then too I guess the happiest are those who look forward to trying to do something so that someday they might get a chance and the saddest are those who give up before they even try."

I then followed with a list of things I would like to do.

1. go to Easter Island and other Pacific islands

2. live off the land for a year or two

3. learn how to really play the piano or guitar or flute

4. sew a long frilly skirt

5. paint a beautiful mural

6. go backpacking on the Appalachian Trail

7. bake some bread from scratch

8. cut down my own Christmas tree and make everyone presents instead of buying them

9. hitchhike or bike around Europe or Eastern Europe.

In reviewing this list I can say at almost 50 years later I've done #s 6, 7, & 8.  And I have no desire to to do any of the others!  Who was I in 1970?

Here I am in early life.  I sent Dan some of these pictures in my letters.  These were taken in the Philippines.  What a long time ago that was.

And then my husband checked out the Death Cleaning book to read it.  He made the right decision on his clean out.