This weekend I really stayed on task and worked through four more boxes of fossil records. There remain only two small cartons of papers that are stowed on the staging table in the garage and a small carton in my living room that I think contains photographs. I will probably break open the photograph carton tomorrow and see what is in it.

I ground cancelled checks, statements, and tax returns dating from 1972. I think Wife kept every bit of paper that came into the house. I threatened several times to just deal with the old records myself. But her fear of losing something that was important overruled my desire to clean up after ourselves and she just became too anxious for me to proceed.

I refused to do it with her, because I knew she would agonize over every decision. I didn’t believe the job warranted that. She knew what I thought. I wasn’t argumentative about it; I just thought it was something that needed to be done.

Well, with her death the job fell to me anyway. I am determined to get through all of that old stuff and deal with it. Most of it (over 90 percent) will go away. A few bits and pieces will be kept and those are mostly things that have her words on them. I do miss her words.

As I worked through all those papers, I recognized a lot of things and places from the past. There were receipts from favorite eating places, records of trips taken, records of work done. As I passed them through the grinder I couldn’t help feeling that I was grinding up the record of our lives. That familiar old feeling of melancholy came over me many times over the weekends as I worked on this humongous project. It felt like I was grinding up not just my life, but our joint lives.

I can say I don’t like how that feels. I already feel the loss of Wife deeply. No day passes when I don’t think of her at least once. When I’m at the office, I expect a text of telephone call asking about my day or when I’m coming home. I honestly think that’s part of the reason I now prefer to work at home. When I’m here at the house I know she won’t be calling or sending me a text. I know that she’s gone and not coming back.

On Saturday, I found myself thinking “I really don’t like feeling this way. I’m going to have to find a way to deal with this and move on.” Heh… I wish it was so simple.

Yet I recall one day during my clinical depression thinking nearly the same thing. That time I got up and started moving around. It marked a watershed in my recovery. I wasn’t done with the depression (or it wasn’t done with me), but I began my recovery that day and moved forward most days after that.

I think new things are coming for me. I’m going to finish this job. I have a few more cartons to deal with after I finish the last three that have unknown contents. But I know the contents of the remaining cartons. For them, it’s a simple matter of opening them and dealing with the contents. It will not be so difficult as the fossils nor will there be the same sense of history associated with the contents.

I need to make another pass through the books in this house. I can eliminate half of them or more. They should go to someone who will read them and wants the library. I might want to read many of the books, but I no longer want a physical library. I want a lot lighter load.

Furthermore, I want that load to comprise the things I use and will use. That’s a fairly short list and I think I can reduce my material possessions by half or more and still not quite be there. But I can work on it.

I have a target to work towards. That’s a good thing.

A few years ago, well many years ago, I moved as the point man (of my family) to Lubbock, Texas. I was a new assistant professor of civil engineering. After I got myself settled in to an apartment, I began searching for a church.

This story (dead link) reminds me of my search. Go read it, then come back.

Did you read it? Good. A long time ago I reflected on my search for a church in Lubbock, Texas. I arrived early in 1993, got myself situated in a small apartment, and got started on my duties. Wife and kids worked in Mississippi to ready for the remainder of the move. As point, I started a search for a church.

My modus operandi was to dress in my not best jeans, an old flannel shirt, and go visit a church on my list from the telephone book. I had a big-ole ponytail and a neatly trimmed beard. I would enter the church a few minutes before the service and watch how people treated me.

Mostly I was ignored. I would find a place near the back to sit and then participate in the service. I was evaluating the teaching and music as well as my reception.

Again, I was mostly an invisible person.

After a few weeks, I visited Lubbock Bible Church. We like Bible churches because they tend to stick pretty close to the Bible. They can be a bit intellectual and a little less practical, but that’s sometimes the risk of solid teaching.

Before I could get out of the church my first visit, I was literally grabbed by the pastor’s wife. I was also greeted by a number of congregants. This was a unusual in my experience and a positive sign.

The pastor’s family took me to lunch and we were acquainted. I found our church. We were there for more than ten years before the pastor retired and things changed, and not for the better. We left soon thereafter and bounced around there in Lubbock and then again once we moved to Carson City.

I haven’t been searching for a church here. I’ve been focused on dealing with the things left undone before Wife’s death. Once I get through all of that, maybe. I haven’t made up my mind yet.

The object lesson of the pastor-as-homeless-man is well-taken. It’s an excellent lesson and needs to be learned by anyone who says they are Christian. I remember.

I’m not very political. Well, I am in the sense that I have no use for either politics or politicians. But I noticed in this news article that the wealthiest 400 Americans have a collective net worth of about $2 trillion. That’s a lot of clams!

In comparison, I bopped over to the national debt clock where I see that the national debt is about $16 trillion. Hmm…

So, if the federal government elected to strip the 400 wealthiest Americans of their wealth, it would only amount to about one-eighth the national debt — at this moment.

So, all the talk about soaking the rich for “their fair share” seems like a lot of (ahem) political talk.

As my father-in-law would say, “There ain’t no squirrel up that tree.”

I’m happy it’s Friday. I will finish something I’ve been working on most of the week today. I will end my week on a good thing. I like tidy.

I woke early this morning, as seems to be a habit now. I took my morning medications (really supplements) and a couple of acetaminophen for my teeth. I probably haven’t written about my dental work, but I lost my first adult tooth a few weeks ago and am in the middle of the crown process for a couple of adjacent teeth, which will culminate with a bridge to replace the lost tooth. I think I’m putting pressure on the temporary appliance and that’s causing me some discomfort. It will be something I discuss with my dentist next week when he finalizes the preparations.

While waiting for my analgesic to work, I read a little on the ‘net. One of the articles I read was about happiness and health. The article was just OK, probably written well enough but I thought some editing could tighten up the language quite a lot. Regardless, there were a couple of points that caught my intellectual interest. In particular, the distinction between hedonism and eudaimonism is articulated (to some degree) as being detectable in gene-expression tests.

I am at a point in life where I can have just about any thing [sic] I want. However, there are not a lot of things I want. What I really want I cannot have. So, as one of my favorite David Wilcox songs says, You can get what’s second best // but it’s hard to get enough. At this time, I don’t even know what second-best might be. For the protagonist of the song, it was velocity. In the end, that proved fatal… although I doubt the protagonist really cared given her state of mind.

But I digress… The string of words in the referenced article that caught my attention was associated with eudaimonism. It resonated with something else I read a few days ago about purpose. As a new widower, my purpose in life (or at least my perceived purpose) is turned upside down. As a husband and father, the husbandry of my family has been a driving purpose most of my life. I’ve been the principal provider and leader for about 40 years.

My wife is gone. My children are mostly independent, or will be soon. I’m in the process of being released from the role that’s been mine for the bulk of my adult life. This is an uncomfortable place to be. It means that I’m in the middle of a compass-reset.

So, as I ruminated on the words from the article (and for once the discussion contained some interesting words), I enumerated a few things that are meaningful to me. They are:

• Music, both listening and making,
• Photography, both observing images and making them,
• Teaching (and learning), and
• Helping others in a variety of ways.

The list is not complete. It will require a bit more work to ferret out some of the other things from deep inside. I’m OK with that and don’t mind doing the work. I especially don’t mind doing the work if it results in the compass-reset I’m looking for. This list is a start and I have to start somewhere.

One thing I know. I am not a hedonist, at least not in the pure sense of the word. I won’t find fulfillment in the pursuit of pleasure.