September 7, 2016 – Near the top of my “to-do” list is ‘Update my personal phone/address book.’

          Early in my business career it seemed every time I would update my rolodex [Oops, there I am dating myself again!] at work I would suddenly find myself out of a job, and most of the time not due to any fault of my own.

          After a half dozen of these suddenly-out-of-job-situations my Mom would quip,

“Whatever you do, don’t update the rolodex.”   

Then sometimes when I would whine or complain about my job because it had gone sour, or wasn’t fulfilling, or challenging enough, or was simply a stress pit, Mom would mischievously suggest,

 “Maybe it is time to update your rolodex at work?”

That is one of the reasons why I drag my feet to update my personal address book.  I am not in the mood for any drastic life changes right now. 

Early in our marriage I used those elegant address books you write in but there would never be enough room under certain letters of the alphabet – you know what I mean – not enough “H” or “S” because of family surnames.  Often they became a mess in less than a year and I could hardly make it from one Christmas card mailing to the next. Eventually I went to a 5 x 8 ring notebook binder with A to Z tabs. 

Now I have it saved on my computer.  I print out a revised copy when needed, punch holes in it and pop it into the notebook binder.  These last few years, I have made notes, changes, deletions, and added dates of death to my hard copy.  At this point I can hardly decipher my inserts, cross outs, and scrawled notes.

And, no, I don’t keep it only on my computer because it never fails that when I urgently need a phone number the power is out or I am away from the house. On several occasions, I have had to call my husband and ask him to look up the number. He isn’t savvy with a computer and he wouldn’t be able to locate it digitally – so, it is the old fashioned black and white on paper book.

I am simply one of those old fashioned paper persons. Technology is great for most everything, but not for my everything.

The second reason is when I start making changes I find it is painful as I notice many of the entries have a line through them and I’ve noted “died” and the date.

 I am frozen in a quandary, not sure how long to keep the deceased person’s block of information.  Often times it includes their birthday or other personal notes.  I hesitate deleting the entry asking myself will their memory slip away and be gone forever if they are no longer in my address book?

  

Because of this emotional snafu on my part, I look for any excuse to abandon the update project.  How does everyone else manage this as we lose more and more dear friends and relatives as we get older?

Should I just caption the entry with the date of death and leave it there so that in three, five, or 10 years from now it will remind me of dear friends or relatives. I am afraid if I don’t have these reminders I will forget and I don’t want to forget.

I need an updated address book without the clutter, but I so want to keep these final date-of-death entries to jog my sweet memories.  

“Recall it as often as you wish – a happy memory never wears out.”

                                                          - Libbie Fudim

Maybe this is just another bittersweet moment in my life where I have to continue to swallow the “bitter” with the “sweet” and move on.