Important Papers and Old Photos

Now that the yard sale is finished I have to tackle my paperwork. (By the way, we made eighty dollars at the sale. I wonder how much that comes down to per hour. I am sure it is a lot more than I make on this blog which is two cents a day. By that standard, I made a fortune.) But back to the paperwork. I was dreading coming here because I had to do this stuff, taxes etc. I have a box filled with the past. Not just my own past but the pasts of my son, my parents, my brother, grandparents. It goes as far back as my fifth generation great grandfather because one of my relatives sent me a book about our family history. That great grandfather was Matthew Thornton, a doctor. He signed the Declaration of Independence. None of the Thorntons could stand to have anyone tell them what to do, and that includes me.

So this morning I was taking this backward journey.  Old photos of us. I was surprised to see how pretty I was when I was a young woman. Too bad I didn't know it at the time. That knowledge might have changed some of my stupid decisions.  Like that last marriage.  If only....   If only each of us could know how beautiful and precious we are.......   It would be a different world.  But we don't and it isn't.

I even found an insurance burial policy that my mother and father took out on me when I was still in high school. I remember when they bought it. It made me angry that they were thinking of my death instead of planning for my future; college education, or anything else that comes between high school and burial. But there it is, my burial policy and I am not even going to be buried. Cremation is the way for me. Burn me up and throw my ashes into the lake (Lake Chapala),  where I have been happy these past two and a half years. But just for fun, I am going to call that insurance company today and see what is up. Too bad it wasn't just a bank account. I would have been getting a little interest on it all these years and it would be worth something. I know my parents bought this policy out of love.  They were looking to the distant future while I was concentrating on the immediate future at the time.

I just finished reading a book by Don Miguel Ruiz titled The Mastery of Love. The beginning statement is this: ..... A Toltec is an artist of Love, an artist of the Spirit, someone who is creating every moment, every second, the most beautiful art --the Art of Dreaming.  Life is nothing but a dream, and if we are artists, then we can create our life with Love, and our dream becomes a masterpiece of art.

This morning I traced my father's war battlefields that he had scribbled out on a thin piece of paper. I filed my marriage and divorce papers. (Several of them. Big mistakes. Well, not big mistakes. There was a lot of love in each one at the time. The endings are just hard to relive.)  I filed death certificates of people I have loved, papers of home buying and home repairs gone wrong, old tax returns....all of it---- dreams written out on faded and torn pieces of paper. My past. The past lives of my family members. I need to finish this up and get on with the future.  Go home, back to Lake Chapala.  Thank you all for continuing to read my blog while I have been away from the area that is of interest to you, Mexico. Okay, one more thing to say. Every journey is a journey of the heart. So thank you for following me through my heart journey these past couple of weeks.

That is an old damaged photo of my mother, my brother and I am the fat,  bald one.  We were so full of life and possibilities then. My mother has passed away. My brother and I don't speak to each other anymore. We are damaged, like that old photo.