Such Heavy Pieces of Paper

Tonight I decided to do one of those tasks I dread - sifting through The Papers.

"The Papers" are the contents, should-be-contents, and should-be-discarded contents of my file cabinet. They range from utility bills to tax forms, letters from old friends to graduate school transcripts, unsorted photographs to automobile titles. Some of these papers are Very Important, some Very Nostalgic, and as evidenced by the two stuffed bags beside me at the moment, some are Very Obsolete.

There are many reasons I dread dealing with The Papers. There are the obvious reasons: it's tedious, it's time consuming, and though it's necessary, it's not a noticeably productive chore like doing the dishes or designating clothes for consignment. Then there are the paranoid reasons I avoid the task: what if I find a bill still unpaid, what if I accidentally discard something and put it through the office shredder only to desperately need it in a month, what if I get the world's worst paper cut?

But the most serious issue that arises in dealing with The Papers is dealing with the memories that they turn up, and the current life situations that the tedious, repetitive task allows me to ponder. Tonight was no exception: recollection and reality surfacing as I sifted through the files.

I found a romantic card from a high school crush whose signature I couldn't decipher (and whose name I couldn't remember). I recycled that card and felt a little lighter.

I found cards from my friend Evelyn, who died not long ago, and from both of my grandmothers, one of whom is currently hospitalized after a fall. I tucked those carefully back into the file.

I found a bank statement from the checking account I had my freshman year of college - an account that's been closed since 2002, with a bank that no longer exists (having since been purchased by a larger bank - gotta love the corporate oligarchy). That went into the shred-bag.

I found photograph after photograph, dating from about 1995 to 2006 (likely the last time I took the time to really deal with The Papers). It was an odd mixture of emotions to see picture after picture of me with various people who used to fill my days, but who now I may have gone a decade without seeing. It was also heartening to see the pictures of the people who still grab a camera and snap a self-portrait with me at their brother's wedding, or at one of our plays, or in my parents' living room.

But as I sorted through paper after paper, picture after picture, finding most too important to discard... I just felt overwhelmed by the fragility of it all. The relative unimportance of keeping these documents organized: I would much rather have the people than the papers, and if my apartment burned down tomorrow, so long as Sofia and I got out okay, well, I'd mourn the loss of the writing notebooks and the photographs and cards, but in the end - I'd get over it. And if God forbid something happened to me, would it make it easier for anyone that I'd kept the programs from most of my theatrical productions and that I've filed all my utility bills?

I did have time to think as I sorted, and think I did. In the past week, the fragility of life has been shoved in my face multiple times. A friend - more an acquaintance, but one to whom I have many connections (she's a very good friend of D's, her boyfriend is a friend of mine, I know her parents, and we have many other mutual friends) - a young woman a few years younger than I, fell from her apartment building in New York and is fighting hard in a New York hospital, with a broken neck, broken back, broken pelvis, broken ribs - though also with a strong support system and an unbroken spirit. Another friend - one whom I have not spoken to in over a year, just after she gave birth to her second child - wrote me out of the blue, and told me in her letter that while her first child was thriving, her second child had only lived four and a half months before dying of heart failure, quietly, at an army base hospital. Another friend - a family friend whose entire family is friends with my entire family, whose faces turned up time and time again in my old photos - has only just been released from the hospital in Michigan after being there since March... and his health struggles continue. And now my grandmother, my Bubbe, is in a hospital in Toledo.

Knowing the delicacy of it all, how can I ever justify spending an evening organizing papers? Shouldn't I be writing, dancing, snuggling, cooking, having a glass of wine, telling a joke, visiting family, visiting old friends, planning a vacation?

I have to trust that I'll have another day to do those things, even though there are no guarantees. Can't use the "carpe diem" theory to avoid housework and bill-sorting. And that's life, I suppose. Tedium and trauma and triumph keeping pace with one another, joined along the way by love and frustration and setbacks and breakthroughs.

I know that nostalgia makes me a cheeseball, but the emotions and reflections are genuine. I'm sitting on my couch now, feeling more introspective than I'd like. The file drawers are shut for now. I've given some time to The Papers. I might just go pour myself a glass of wine now, and then say a little prayer for the healing of body and soul that so many of our loved ones need... and then go to bed, and look forward to tomorrow, with gratitude for life itself, and its endless variety.