3.3.13

26. Missing paper


Stella opened the door looking very nervous and tired.

'Hi. How are you?'

'Not good,' said Stella,'I haven’t slept, it’s been a dreadful week. Monday, I went to the box that I thought was the one filled with the business stuff and it wasn’t. I panicked and rushed around looking but couldn’t find the right box and that made me even more worked up. So I stopped because I couldn’t look systematically I couldn’t even think. I needed to have someone with me. You were coming today, so I thought, I will wait for Chrystine."

'Okay," I said, 'Let’s start at the top of the house and look in all the boxes.'

So we did.

I found some old business related stuff which raised our hopes for a moment.

We’d worked our way to the front room and behind the door were some boxes that I’d labelled. It wasn't there. We methodically made our way around the room. We got to a bookcase with some boxes in front of it. Stella said 'These are my grandfather’s things 'But then she looked closer, into the bottom shelf of the bookcase itself.

'Oh my, oh, here it is!!'

'I am so glad that you actually found it yourself!' I said.

We retired to make coffee and eat pain au chocolate.

We didn’t actually do much else on the visit, we talked over coffee for 2 and a half hours, Stella reckoned that it was all part of decluttering her mind after it had gotten so full of yuck over the week.

'Usually, we talk a bit before we start, but you knew that I needed you to pitch straight in.' commented Stella 'And, usually, you ask me what I want to do, my sense of control and responsibility for deciding that was established at our first session. But this time I needed you to take the lead in how we were going to do it!'

'I’m interested that you didn’t phone or e-mail me,' I responded

Stella said:

'I didn’t think that you would know. I have always been responsible for that box. You hadn’t ever even gone through it. Why would you know where it was? If it was gone, it would be because I took the box to the tip or to a charity shop. It is important that I control panic and leave certain things for an appropriate time'

'But, we’ve been careful. Paper has either been shredded or put in re-cycle bags'

'Yes, I know,' said Stella," and if I had done something silly, I just wanted you to be here when I found out!'

The HUGE satisfaction for us both was that the process is working! We did a box of paper after lunch.

1 comment:

  1. I liked this post, because I have also been a hoarder of papers which I thought were so important. So I could relate to this. But when you have so many papers you can't find the ones you really need, you know you have hoarded too many. Now I have a few hours most weeks when I look at paperwork and do shredding.

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