A Responsible Act of Aging

A responsible aspect of aging is the “letting go.”

I am not responsible.

But I do offer the tips of my knurled fingers to the researchers of 3M . . . for they will find an adhesive, one painfully insoluble adhesive, clutching to the precious “treasures” of my past.

I live in a world of angst . . . angst that my daughter will invade my house, and separate my precious treasures from me, and whimsically send them on their destiny to the Happy Dump. For she has threatened . . . or promised . . . I’m not quite sure which.

My daughter yells! “You’ve just GOT to get rid of that stuff! It’s . . . just . . . stuff!” For she has read my last will and testament, and knows she will have to do what I can’t . . . let go of my “stuff.”

But reality has a way of hitting responsibility on the side of the head.

My name might by James, but it isn’t King James, authorized or not. And I don’t hold my present vocation in life by the tenure of Divine Right. My final day will be August 31. The severance package will hold me until October 5. Of course I have posted for vacant positions both internal and external to my company. But what happens. Will happen.

But I sense that Old Man Moses, seeing some imperceptible movement in that cloud in the sky, has hollered out, “Dude, start packin’ your tent. We’re movin’ on out!”

A responsible aspect of aging is to “travel lite.”

And I am now forced into that responsibility.

This morning, in painful resignation, the first of the uncountable sweeps of my tent . . . the winnowing of my precious stuff . . . the trips to the dump.

Only in my county, we have decency. We don’t actually go to “The Dump.” We go to a “Transfer Station,” where, things can just be slid, like a burial at sea, over a steel shelf, and they just disappear from view, yet with a sickening clank and thunk, into some containerized truck that will, in the secrecy and privacy and the solitude of the night, “go to the dump.” The undertaker for precious stuff.

I knew this day had to come.

And I fought it. I hated myself for fighting it. And I am ashamed to admit that I did.

But I simply could not make myself start this process.

I knew where it was that I had to start.

For as soon as I could deal with that chair, I could deal with all the rest.

It was a pine wood captain’s chair. Part of the colonial-like trestle table dining set we purchased in the early winter months of 1973, when we moved into a brand new little townhouse. My daughter was born a month later.

I sat in that chair. Held my daughter in that chair. Cuddled her in that chair. Cooed with her in that chair. Laughed at her and with her in that chair. And sat in the others of the set as well. My son, perched on the booster seat in that chair, would pontificate on the requirements of his life.

A couple of months ago, I sat again in that chair. And it teetered . . . slowly . . . almost imperceptibly . . . to the side. I could hear a sort of noise that was ominous, but not recognizable. I had to grab myself to keep from falling. Osteoporosis of chair leg joint. Finally, with a jagged edge of tenacity, it simply failed. The wood just too fragile to attempt a repair.

I moved over to its mate. Another chair with an identical repertoire of preciousness. I sat. It teetered. Osteoporosis of chair leg joint. And there was no perceptible difference in the standard deviation of the life-span in those two articles of precious stuff.

And so I knew I simply had to do it.

I carefully laid the first of the two broken chairs, with their detached spindle legs, on that steel shelf to oblivion.

I let go.

I sobbed uncontrollably.

I let go.

And a responsible act of aging is to learn that the “precious stuff” is not “the memories.”

The Refectory Manager