Loose Ends

     Here, just beyond the crest of 19 months as a widow, I am still tying up loose ends - and my life is ruled by paper. Paper. Mountains of paper. Statements, bills, receipts, records - paper and more paper. My late husband was a real 1950s-type guy. He insisted upon balancing the checkbook, paying the bills, tracking insurance policies and investments and staying on top of taxes. I was very spoiled, not because I wanted to be, but because he was adamant about handling all of this stuff himself. So for almost 47 years, I paid no bills, filed no tax forms, ("Here, dear. Just sign on this line,")  and I only ran for cover when I'd overspend on our shared credit card.
      The first clue that I was in over my head came just a few months after he died, when I stepped into what turned out to be an ice-cold shower. I can't begin to tell you how it works, but my hot water magically comes through my furnace and sprays its warmth through the shower head every morning - except for this particularly cold morning when I just couldn't seem to warm up - and I thought the shower would take the chill out of my bones. Shivering out of control and wrapped in a towel, I called our air-conditioning guy. He's a local - very friendly - long-married - and he was a big fan of my husband's. "Sounds to me like you might have run out of heating oil, Linda. Better check your oil tank. See if you can find your last fill statement."
        Uh.....okay. I'll go check the oil tank, which sits in red-painted glory in a corner of the basement. I knew it involved a wrench and a stick - but for the life of me, I can't reach the nut to affix the wrench to - and the stick has no markings, so I wouldn't know what I was looking at anyway. I  made a few calls, and learned that "Frankie" was the person I needed - the A/C guy said that if my tank was empty, the lines would have to be bled, and Frankie was the one to attend to this. Long story short: the oil tank was indeed dry as a bone - when I finally found the fill statement, it said 400 gallons had been delivered. Frankie came and bled the lines after the oil company re-filled the tank. Frankie, who turned out to be a very kind and understanding big bear of a furnace guy, also noticed my water softener was low on salt, and the filter was in need of changing - so while he was at the local hardware store buying a gauge to install on the oil tank, he also picked up some bags of salt and a new water filter. Who knew? In addition to not paying bills or filing tax forms, I was clueless about heating oil, (400 gallons sounded like an OCEAN of oil to me!), bleeding lines, water softeners and water filters. Jeeze, Louise! I have since put myself on a budget plan with the heating oil company, so now I don't have to worry about checking the shiny new gauge Frankie installed .
      The second clue that, "Houston, we have a problem," was when an agent for my homeowner's insurance called to say that my homeowner's policy was going to be canceled if I didn't pay my premium. I vaguely remembered getting an envelope from an insurance company with a whole bunch of slick papers inside, in living color, which I pitched into the trash, because I thought it was promotional advertising. Whoops! I'd discarded my renewal notice - duh! - and the sympathetic agent said I could renew over the phone with a credit card. Whew! Another bullet dodged!
    And the avalanche of paper continued. Statements about investments. Some guy who sounded like he was about 17 called to express his condolences about my husband - turns out he was the contact person for a money market fund - and he asked me if I wanted to inherit or assume the fund. "Beats the daylights outta me, Sunshine," I told him, feeling like I'd just been told to identify the parts of a jet engine, or something. He explained, in finance-ese, what the difference was, leaving me with a whirling brain and crossed eyes and no further understanding of what is inheriting and what is assuming.
     I also knew, before he died, that my husband was a compulsive "filer." I had six filing cabinet drawers full of files, a veritable encyclopedic record of our life for almost 47 years in the form of bills of sale, receipts, very old bank statements, and God alone knows what else. I can still see the expression of dismay and fear on the face of my accountant the first time I stumbled into her office, bearing two huge file boxes of records. "My husband died in December," I said on that cold February morning. "Everyone said I should come to you to do my income tax." I dropped the boxes and ran like hell for the door. God bless her. She somehow made sense of all that stuff and all those files - and my filing went in on time, and I got a refund! I felt like I'd won the lottery.
     So now, a year and change after that first baptism of fire - or ice-cold water, if you prefer -I'm beginning to get sorted out. No less paper, I might add, as it still gets stuffed into my mailbox - but I'm beginning to be able to differentiate between the bills and the promotional garbage - and I've just spent an entire DAY organizing my very own filing cabinet, and my own system for filing, so that my accountant won't be apoplectic the next time I walk in.
     But I'm still surprised by the unexpected discoveries in all these papers. Little scraps with HIS all-too-familiar handwriting - little notes to himself. "Zing went the strings of my heart." It's almost as if he's still here. Almost. Sweet reminders of the lovely man who took such good care of me and his family - and a filing cabinet full of what I have and no longer have, if you understand what I mean.
     And paper is, after all, what it comes down to, Birth certificate to death certificate, with all those papers in between. Something tangible to say we walked this earth at one time or another and then we ceased to live. I had no idea all this awaited me - and I hover somewhere between gratitude and aggravation - and short of origami and airplanes, I'll just have to deal with all this paper.