paring down.

Among the books on the desk alone are three copies of Benjamin Graham's The Intelligent Investor. Three different editions. Introductions by three different noteworthies. It is somewhere between art and skill, deciding which books to slip into the give-away bag. Two copies of Graham go. I leave enough that if Jeff tires of the 3 books he's been "reading" for the past 2 years, there's something else to offer. Anything with Warren Buffet's name on it is good.

He woke me up at 5:15 a.m. "Emily." he says. "Why and where?" It does not take much to rouse me, as I am primed for intervention. "Why and where what?" I say. At least he still knows "who." "Where are we, and what are we doing here?" "We are at home," I say, "trying to sleep for another hour." But it's somewhat too late. I've already been alerted to my bladder. What happens at night when I go to the bathroom is this: Jeff does not think Oh, me too. I'll go next. He skips straight to the I'll go part, and stands there in front of me, confounded to find there's someone else in the way. "I'll be done in a sec," I say. "Then we're going back to bed." Jeff says "Is there something to eat?" "Yes," I say. "In 45 minutes."

The book collection bag, in the hallway, has also swallowed several tomes on architecture. We have hundreds--mostly full color hardcovers illustrating an architect, a style, a trend. It was a lifelong interest, but he hasn't taken notice of them in years. It's time to thin the herd. It will take awhile, 3-4 at a time. But we have awhile.

I am working on his dresser now. I have unearthed no fewer than 3 identical brown Brooks Brothers glasses cases, each of which has the word "car" written in blue ballpoint on the inside-top of the clamshell. The hardest things to sort are the stacks of correspondence, tucked away in almost every drawer. They're there because family members returned them to Jeff over the past several years, thinking that remembrances would mean something to him. He glanced at a few. Mainly he cannot process them at all, though he might chuckle at a silly photograph. There's a letter from his mother, written on stationery with the letterhead of the small hardware store they owned in Hurlock, Maryland, listing Jeff's parents as proprietors. I don't know why I save it, but I do. I save a card from his Mom in which she wrote that she's especially proud of his unfailing honesty, kindness, and generosity of spirit. Almost everything else goes.

Now we'll take 3 large black plastic trash bags of clothing, and 2 shopping bags of books, to the collection bins down the road. "It's stuff we don't use anymore," I'll say. It's true, and Jeff won't question it.