Founding Editor's Note - Memoir (and)

candida lawrence

Founding Editor’s Note

Last year my sister Anne died and I inherited her house, her car, everything inside her house including not twenty pounds of “letters and stuff” from her basement but surely a truckload of files, the savings of a lifetime of never throwing anything away. I had not known this about my sister, and as I read through all of it (how could I not?) I learned much, but in the end, exhausted by endless trivia and letters from people I did not know and found boring, I sighed and groaned and complained to anyone who would listen, that she might have begun throwing away about twenty-five years ago, when she was still able to carry filled black plastic sacs to the front porch. More important, a decade ago she might have found pleasure in remembering the story behind each piece of paper.

So—the Managing Editor now advocates letter-writing and putting into boxes the evidence of one’s life. She says this would help us keep track of our selves. She offers an alarming list of items we could save and these items are what I recently spent several weeks throwing away in my sister’s home. I’ll tell you again—she saved everything—birthday cards, receipts from bookstores, get-well cards, junk jewelry and valuable necklaces, photos of everyone, every letter she received and copies of every letter she sent out. Her basement also contained all the leftovers of my parents’ lives that she had saved when they died.

Now let me say that having spent a few months reading and sorting and throwing away, I am alarmed that the Managing Editor suggests that we add to the poor old Earth’s arthritis. Perhaps we—you and I—don’t really need to gather up our young selves but can fuel along with the mature selves that are still with us. We can remember without holding a rotten old headband in our crooked fingers. I can remember that I was writing down the words to “Green Eyes” in the Sierras when I was fourteen; that night I had decided to drink the wine in the cabin while my parents were away because I wanted to experience being drunk. I have no trouble remembering how sick I was and that was one of life’s lessons. I didn’t need to save the bottle.

On the other hand, I believe the Freddy letter is an important artifact in the Managing Editor’s life, and is meaningful, also adorable, and may tell her something about her nine-year-old self. SAVE IT!

— Candida

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