Sometimes - at least in our house - it does not pay to try and get too organized. I had made up my mind that this weekend one of my chores would be to gather up some of my fragile, ancient family papers and get them staged to scan. Having inherited so much of that sort of thing....report cards of my mother, old pictures, cards and letters, I've been determined to get them scanned and saved for future generations. I was moving along nicely about a year ago, until the remodel of the bathroom necessitated putting it all away.
Well, true to the promise to myself, I began to gather up items and gently move them into a box to bring upstairs. And then I realized what I was handling. Letters, sweet letters from my Grandma, Gwennie Roushey, to her daughter, my mother. Letters that passed along family news, discussed the weather, and dripped with the heartwrenching lonliness of a mother for her child.
Not only that, but they mention several times that "Ann must be too busy to write." I was all caught up in being a teen, in the last year of high school, working pretty much every hour I wasn't in class, and making plans to move to Philadelphia to attend nursing school.
One letter is dated just 4 days before she died.
Fortunately, I did write, and just in time. Something had moved me to sit down on a March, 1961 day and pour my heart into a letter to this dear, dear lady. I told her how much she had always meant to me, how much I loved her. I sent it off, she received it, and the next day she was gone. I have never, ever been so glad of anything I had done. And the lesson I learned, - "say I love you now, because tomorrow could be too late", has never been forgotten.
Anyway, my point was, you start in organizing and you find yourself, an hour later, reading the words and travelling back in time, loving your memories, regreting your shortfalls, rejoicing in family, and none the more organized! But blessed, and that's not a bad thing.
Well, true to the promise to myself, I began to gather up items and gently move them into a box to bring upstairs. And then I realized what I was handling. Letters, sweet letters from my Grandma, Gwennie Roushey, to her daughter, my mother. Letters that passed along family news, discussed the weather, and dripped with the heartwrenching lonliness of a mother for her child.
Not only that, but they mention several times that "Ann must be too busy to write." I was all caught up in being a teen, in the last year of high school, working pretty much every hour I wasn't in class, and making plans to move to Philadelphia to attend nursing school.
One letter is dated just 4 days before she died.
Fortunately, I did write, and just in time. Something had moved me to sit down on a March, 1961 day and pour my heart into a letter to this dear, dear lady. I told her how much she had always meant to me, how much I loved her. I sent it off, she received it, and the next day she was gone. I have never, ever been so glad of anything I had done. And the lesson I learned, - "say I love you now, because tomorrow could be too late", has never been forgotten.
Anyway, my point was, you start in organizing and you find yourself, an hour later, reading the words and travelling back in time, loving your memories, regreting your shortfalls, rejoicing in family, and none the more organized! But blessed, and that's not a bad thing.
