I was moving things around in the office today trying to make room for furniture that came up from the basement that is just lying around the dining room waiting for a place to go.  The book shelves came up and I pulled over the boxes of books and movies and started to fill the bookshelves.  At the bottom of this pile of boxes I find a magic box . . .  labeled “office/papers.”

Being in the office its in the right place, but I have no idea what is in this box!  I do not recall seeing this box before.  I have undoubtedly pushed it and carried it around this house a few times over the past few years . . .  but have I ever looked inside it?

Now incase I need to remind some of you, the accident that gave me my brain injury occurred just hours before the move into my house.  I not only moved while concussed, I do not remember the entire month following . . .  so I unpacked concussed . . . . . and it is quite possible that there may have been some last minute concussed packing.

Thus this box that I know absolutely nothing about.

Low and behold this box contains a lot of stuff!!!  Some of which I have been looking for!  This was exciting.  I found my closing paperwork for the house for which I spent the first 6 months of last year searching.  I found the abstract for the property which was handed over from the previous owner.  Found a clip board with working repair lists for the house, one marked “Post Purchase”.  I found to do lists and notebooks, folders and schedules for multiple Local Charm stores . . .    A folder full of training docs and store info for the then new Baton Rouge location where I spent January and part of February of 09 training their new management and staff.  And a folder of all the faxed paperwork for the purchase of the house I was trying to navigate long distance.

And pictures . . .    some really neat pictures . . .  along with really great cards and memorabilia.

This was my desk.  This box was full of everything that was on the roll top desk, and in the top right hand drawer.  And here its been all the this time.

I am struck by the silliness of a box that had gone “missing” and finally pops up after nearly three years . . . .    I am struck at my former self’s masterful ability to multitask and keep organized.  I am struck by the dreams on the lists regarding all the work I wanted to do to the house . . . .  things that obviously never got done.  I am struck by the discord in my sense of time. . . . How these last three years have been so quick and sudden, a blink, making it seem like this box was my yesterday .  And how these last three years have also been vast and endless, a bubble, making my pre-conk life seem so far from where I am now.  Most intensely, I am struck by the feeling of going through someone else’s things.  Private papers and memories that belong to someone else.

I am not sure if that feeling is a healthy one or not, or perhaps its just natural.  I am  saddened by my loss tonight.  After hours of shredding, recycling, and sorting, I feel like I have just gone through a box of paperwork belonging to someone who is deceased.  Cleaning up, deciding what to keep and what to throw.  In many ways, that’s exactly what it was like.

I am pleased to have found the box and the important documents and other lost and forgotten things that were inside.  I am grateful to be able to have the ability to remember that life, and those things; grateful to have my long term memory.  I am also honored to have not only known that amazingly organized, multitasking, home buying, traveling professional, I got to be her.  If only for a little while.  That was pretty cool.  It was a good life.   I loved that life.   I was very blessed.

Now its time to go be someone else . . . .   an opportunity for which I am also blessed. . . .   for it easily could have been someone else going through that box tonight.