[Look right for a picture of me on my mothers knee]
I am told that the last "oldest person" to die in this country had just turned 113. As I shall be 77 this August, even if I live long enough to earn a place in the record books, I am already well on the way. And my family's average age for troubling the Undertaker gives me no great reason to expect I shall beat the record set by that lady from Yorkshire.
What is all this about? Well, I'll tell you, it's the books, that's what it is, the books. They've got to me. It's not that I've been a great reader, more a dabbler really and late into the field at that, but I have acquired a great many books. Moving into this nice comfortable flat, I took only a relatively small number with me (240 or so), but still enough to alarm the staff. I left by far the greater number behind in the presbytery where I had my home for some 30 years. They were to be shared out among friends and relatives as time went by. Alas time went by faster than friends and relatives, or even honest thieves showed up, and as the Bishop has chosen my old presbytery for his latest future-shaping idea, I've had to get the books out of there, pronto. It's been a wrench.
I must not make too much of it for many of the books spent their time on my shelves beckoning me to read them. But even in that unrequited state, we became friends, the books and I. So parting is indeed a wrench, a wrench that is at its most acute this very day. For even as I write the man from Cleveleys may be on his way. He will be looking round the piles of books in my old place and taking what he wants. To be honest, I hope he takes them all. No he has not promised me any money for them, but better by far that these books beckon someone else to read them than that they end up on the rubbish dump.
I mentioned that I shall be dying soon and a necessary part of any dying is letting go of things, in my case, these books. So a part of my dying is taking place today.
An equally important part of dying is a very positive thing, the conscious leaving of our things to others. Such are wills. Mine is made and settled and yet there are still some things, not of a physical nature, I would like to pass to others. These are the thoughts, dreams and ideas which surfaced in me as I attempted to live out my allotted time span. They may prove of no use to any one but I would rather they floated on the airwaves than that they simply joined me in the grave. I can but try.
I too have an issue with parting with books as they have grown up with you over the years. They have shaped the person who you are and getting rid feels like getting rid of a very part of yourself. I know how you feel Val.
ReplyDeletePass any on to me. They will be worth keeping I know. Wish you had more than one book published Val. You have written some great stuff over the years.
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