Today, S— came to pick up these nine boxes, to take to the LGBTQ archives at our local university. It feels like a pretty big deal. It involved six winters of going through old boxes that I had carried around for years–some for 50 years. I had to sort them paper by paper, and it became a look back into all the years of my life until now. I shredded and recycled and even composted much more paper than I kept. Perhaps I could have winnowed even more, if I went back through and sorted it all again, but I was ready to be done. (And I think that is one of the roles of an archivist anyway.) S— was so kind, and thanked me for adding to their collection. I felt good about entrusting her with these boxes. (Soon I will also transfer many years of digital files. But those are funny–you can give them and still keep them.)

At our retired ministers’ meeting this week, we reflected on poems, and especially the one by Mary Oliver that ends:

To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

“In Blackwater Woods” by Mary Oliver, from American Primitive. © Back Bay Books, 1983.

Letting go of these boxes, in a deeper sense, is a way of facing my own mortality. I notice that I am not completely letting go of these boxes, but giving them into someone’s care. I am hoping that I don’t disappear. Letting go of the boxes into an archive is not letting go of the self, really. On the contrary, it is saying: my life has had meaning and significance. And in the context of our times, it is saying, this lesbian life has meaning and significance–this lesbian life of activism, of writing, of spirituality, of ministry, has significance. Didn’t I learn that from Joan Nestle and the Lesbian Herstory Archives in New York? We must keep our own history/herstory. Not let it get lost. Especially now.

Sometimes, it feels like too much–too many pieces of paper, too many words, too many actions–will something essential get lost in the overabundance of words? But that is who I have been–always a pondering soul, a writing soul, a many-worded soul. I also notice that I am revealing so much of myself in this gift to the archives. Like writing, though, it is one step removed. So my shyness barely peaks out as I reflect on it. And I didn’t gift everything. For example, I decided not to send over my journals from 1983 on–(earlier ones are intermingled in the boxes.) I want those journals to go to the archives after I die. But the journals reveal not only my life but the lives of those who are close to me, and it feels much more intimate than the other papers. Very much part of my lesbian life, but for later revelation.

I think how, ultimately, in death, we let go in a much deeper way. I will let go of my small life into the larger Life, the larger Consciousness. I have always hoped, and felt it too, that Someone sees my life, that Someone sees all. I believe that I would be known and held in meaning and significance and love, whether I had written any words at all. All of us are.