It was a cold Iowa January day when the auctioneer announced “SOLD” to our bid on the antique file cabinet. My husband Harold and I hadn’t planned to buy an old file cabinet on that Saturday morning’s small town estate sale; but that was the lure of auctions … not knowing what you’d bring home.

This was the 1980s, the era of my antique shop when going to estate sales and auctions were necessary to keep up its inventory. Always watching for items my customers were collecting or looking for, along with other sellable things, there were often personal finds we couldn’t pass up — like the file cabinet. According to the auctioneer, it had spent most of its life in the office of the town’s hardware store. When the store closed, it was moved to the owner’s home where we were attending the sale.

Made in the 1920s of quarter-sawn golden oak, it had brass drawer handles and label holders, and was unique for its various size drawers. Other than needing to be cleaned and then polished with my special furniture oil, it was in excellent condition. We must have had help getting it loaded into our van, along with other purchases, and I’m not sure how we managed to move it up to the second-story room we called our office where it stood tall and stately.

Because there was always room for additional files, serious sorting and discarding was never a priority. This was good news years later when we moved to Oregon and it could be transported without removing its contents. This was also allowed on two future moves. The day of reckoning came when I decided to move to Mary’s Woods Retirement Community and knew our time together was over. I spent hours shedding and shredding memories of bygone years, reducing the important files to fit into two large desk drawers, and bundling the rest to be dealt with later. There was a sense of sadness as I checked the empty drawers and removed their file labels, but I was grateful the new house owners were buying it.

Now, seven years later, the two desk drawers have reached their limits and I am again in the sorting and shredding process. Outdated things are easy to discard, but others require sensible decisions. Do I need to keep the stash of realtor forms and house sale info that happened seven years ago … or the fat folder of improvements made to the house from 2006 to 2018, complete with credit card receipts? These brought back memories of husband Dick’s building the garden shed … and adding a room upstairs after we’d spent three years looking for a one-level house.

The ”Miscellaneous Correspondence” file took me back to earlier stages of my life. Copies of letters sent during my activist days in 1987 when Iowa was trying to pass laws to ban smoking in public places and hospitals (yes, hospitals!). When Harold had heart attacks and surgeries and I could spend only ten minutes an hour with him in the ICU, there were no non-smoking areas available. Being asthmatic, I belonged to a Better Breathers group and we bombarded restaurants, grocery stores, and other places with letters, had opinion articles published in papers and were successful in getting non-smoking areas in many of them.

When hospitals and rehab facilities sent me survey forms about care received, I was never hesitant to reply and let them know where they could do better. In 1998 I answered a letter of condolence from a doctor who had seen Harold in his first days of being admitted to what was his last journey to the hospital. I thanked her for her thoughtfulness but said I was confused at her saying “It sounded very sudden and am sure he didn’t suffer at all” as I felt his 12 days in ICU didn’t indicate a “sudden” death, and proceeded to list what he had gone through regarding suffering.

In 2009 I answered a survey from a highly recommended rehab facility where Dick spent three weeks after recovering from surgery following his biking accident. I respectfully let them know where they had failed to live up to their reputation. While these and other copies of letters are reminders of poignant and trying times, I cannot discard them. They serve to make me appreciate all the good times in my life even more.

For now, I’ve put aside the shedding and shredding of memories and enjoying more outside time these beautiful spring days. I still miss not having the spacious old file cabinet … and I’ll deal with that other bundle I brought with me seven years ago another time.

Jo Ann Parsons is a member of the Jottings Group at Lake Oswego Adult Community Center (jottings 33@gmail.com).