Another woman said, "What frustrates me the most is that I am afraid I'm not going to get everything done that I need to do--before I'm gone.  I don't want to leave a bunch of stuff for my family to have to deal with like my mom and dad left me.  I doubt my folks knew how difficult it would be."

"And the things in my home that I love, nobody in my family wants. What I thought was a treasure, my children think is junk.  I can't figure out what to throw out and what to keep.  The things that I value the very most, are things that belonged to my mother, my aunts, my grandmothers--nothing that is worth much, but they bring back memories for me.  All those people, and most of my friends--everybody I grew up with--are gone now.  And my children don't remember those things--they don't have those memories.  It makes me sad.  So I end up not doing anything."

"And as long as I'm talking about memories, they are one of the most precious things I have--now that I am this age.  Sometimes my children tell me that I live in the past--like that is a bad thing to do.  But "the past" is what I have left now.  And memories of my parents, my husband, or things that I have experienced, places that I have gone give me a lot of joy."

"Let's face it, as older women, as widows, the future doesn't hold a lot.  You aren't going to get a job, or go to school, or have children.  You aren't going to do much of anything that takes physical strength--or that takes very much time to do--you can't stay at 'doing' for long because you wear out."

"The worst thing that I am afraid I am not going to get done is paperwork.  I have fifty years of paper that I am afraid to throw away.  Nobody keeps paper anymore--everything is on their phones or computers--which I don't know how to do.  And I don't know which papers I have that are important.  What I should toss.  What I should keep.  So I just put it all in boxes.  Which is upsetting because that's what my parents did.  And I still have unopened boxes of their paperwork that I need to go through.  I ought to invite everyone over, build a fire with all that paper.  We could roast wieners."

I couldn't help thinking that I had a ton of paper that I could add to the bonfire.  It would be a relief.