Sorting Lives

(Author's note:  As part of this visit to The Ranch, I stopped by to see my Aunt Pat, whom you have very kindly been praying for/thinking good thoughts for.  Imagine my surprise when she opened the door!  She is doing much better, to the point they are thinking of moving her off hospice.  Thank you for all of your kind thoughts and prayers.) 

Two weeks ago, I completed the sorting of the last of the materials at The Ranch.

The moment almost slipped by me without noticing, the last sheet of paper in a pile of papers from the file cabinet that I set aside during my last visit to go through again to make sure I did not dispose of anything that I truly wanted to keep.  I sorted it into the appropriate pile - keep, burn, shred - and looked for the next sheet.  It was not there.

I was finished.

It was an odd feeling, as this is a process that more or less has been going on for the last four years.  We knew this time would come; if anything I was guilty of not being proactive and starting to sort sooner.  That slower pace worked as long as I was able to get back there for one week a month; it did not work nearly so well when a week became a weekend.

Having never sorted a life or lives, it is a sobering thing to realize that you have in essence looked at an individual's life (or in this case a married couple) through the things that they owned.  In some reasons I know why those things are there, in other cases I do not:  Why did they keep this?  What significance did it have?  If I let go of it, am I releasing some precious treasure?

Ultimately of course, all we can do is all we can do:   we set aside the things we know, we evaluate the things we do not know, and let the rest go to some else.

And somehow, suddenly find ourselves at peace.