What You Considered Important

Dearest Rachel –

I hope you don’t mind too much, but I’ve jailbroken four of the computers you left behind. There was a span of time when I couldn’t get into any of them unless I was listed as a secondary user, and could log in with my own Microsoft password. And the alleged Rosetta Stone that I had found a few weeks back wasn’t any help in figuring out how to log in to any of these machines initially.

But after some backdoor work in the system, I think I’ve managed to get in. Granted, it means you now have a new password assigned to your name, but were you to return and ask me for it, I’d be more than happy to fill you in (actually, I’d be more than happy, period, and I’d probably do just about anything you wanted me to).

And while I’m not finding much in the way of handwritten notes, I am finding a handful of things you wrote and left behind. Drafts of the announcement to your Facebook friends attempting to properly express the news of and your grief over your dad’s passing. Emails to various YouTubers – explaining an opposing political view to Philip DeFranco, offering assistance to MatPat and Team Theorist in their efforts to upgrade some of their equipment, that sort of thing. A detailed story of your soul journey, and how you came to Christ – pages more detailed than the one I’d found tucked away in your Bible that I read at your funeral. I’ll probably send that last one out in a couple of days, in honor of your birthday coming up.

And then there was a collection of images; typical Facebook stuff, I suppose, but there was one that – after all these weeks of going through so much in the house – really resonated with me:

This was so much you, darling, and I know you wouldn’t deny it. It’s why there’s so much left behind for us to pick up after – and while it hurts to go through it all, the fact that I’ve found so much really personal stuff allows me to keep and treasure some things even as I’m getting rid of a painfully large amount of stuff.

Your creed, unspoken though it might have been, was well stated here. There are – were – so many enjoyable things to do in life than to waste it doing something as mundane (and quite frankly, the opposite of enjoyable, I’m sure you would have admitted) as cleaning. No to mention, how soon would it be that everything would just get messy again, and have to be cleaned all over? No, best to let it all be, set it aside, and spend life in the more worthwhile pursuit of happiness elsewhere – it’s just too short, after all.

And it was, wasn’t it?

So these activities – among others – were the ones you considered important. Not cleaning. And that’s fine. This way, Jan and I can find more and more of you along the way, like Lara Croft and Henry Jones. Sometimes it’s painful, sometimes it’s surprising, but it’s very rarely boring.

I’m not sure I should thank you for that, but there you are.