TRASH OR TREASURE?

Observation of the Day!

On Sunday I was told that I needed to come home and clean out my office. To Doe this was always an eyesore, and I am sure she was most anxious to get rid of her personal affront to her neatness ethic. Not that it isn't an eyesore, but it was my eyesore.

In this office I wrote my book, researched and wrote the Arnold Family History and researched and organized my genealogy. It was a place where my important work was performed.

I first cleaned out the desk drawers. That carried no emotion because it was an accumulation of outdated paperwork and the crap stuffed there when I didn't know what to do with it. Twenty years is a lot of accumulated crap.

Now the hard work would start. In the closet were all of the personal awards I had accumulated. The awards came a little tougher to throw out because they represented my life's work. They were small recognitions, but recognition non-the- less.

I looked at the files that contained emails, web genealogical research, many family pictures of people I didn't even know, meaningful newspaper clippings of events, and many other things that I didn't even take the time look at.

When our parents died my brothers were assigned the task of cleaning out and selling the house. I told them the only thing I really wanted was anything that was relative to our family history. At Christmas Jim brought a big box from my parent's attic containing most of the stuff that was currently residing in my office closet. In that box were the answers to many unanswered questions about our parents and grandparents. The most significant information started my quest to find out about our father's adoption. In the end I knew more about his adoption that he ever did during his lifetime. This story is told in detail in my Family history, Looking for Little Ward.

One of the items that was tucked away in the plastic tubs was my Mom and Dad's high school year books. I often imagined the excitement she felt when she opened this yearbook for the first time. Somewhere in the book is my mom's DNA. These books of the late twenties was where I found what it was like for our parents in high school. It was there that I learned the notation by my mother's high school picture that said, "It's not hard to be nice when you are naturally nice." That brief statement was my mom all her life. Now it will reside in an anonymous landfill, but not to be forgotten.

As I lifted the lid of this personal family history, I wondered what I should do with it. This was job that should have been left to my kids after we passed away. Had our parents and/or grandparents treated it as trash then much of our family story would have been lost. Instead, because it was not thrown out it became a family treasure, rich in the detail of their life.

Now I had to consider what to do with this treasure. It should not even be my decision, it should be our descendant's choice. Circumstances, however, made it my choice. I didn't really have a place to put it. After all, I had not even looked at it for more than ten years. I had extracted the values from the data it carried. I really didn't think any of our kids had any interest in the stuff, but perhaps generations beyond them might have genealogy buff amongst them. I reluctantly made the decision to make it trash. It was the hardest thing I have done for a long time. I knew the wound would heal, and I didn't exactly throw away my family history, just the hands on detail of what I wrote about. I have the written version of the history, which I have yet to put together in a final form, the CD containing the genealogical charts that go very far back to the fifteenth and sixteenth century, and two albums containing some of the most important family pictures and documents. Perhaps this will be enough. The material behind it is more important to me than anyone else. I have have left a written history that can serve as jumping off point for some future unborn descendants. I am proud of that.

I didn't sleep particularly well that night. I wondered whether I should go the next day and retrieve the "trash" and restore it to "treasure". I finally said no. This was the past it has no future.

And so I walk on making my memories!

Have a better day than I had on Sunday!

Sam