To File

“In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.” – Abraham Lincoln

Late last year a cousin of mine passed away unexpectedly. Tom was a few years older than me, finishing college at Northwestern University before I finished high school. He moved to California so he could pursue his dream of being a marine biologist. Trying to do so from the shores of Lake Michigan wasn’t going to work for that.

Given the age and geographic differences, we were not particularly close but as adults would have occasional conversations. I met his young daughter and newborn son one night taking a break from a USCAP meeting in San Francisco.  We went golfing and talked about our parents and college experiences and I likely complained about being a pathology resident but not about being in the Army.

I assumed he would become the patriarch of the family.

Like me, he enjoyed baseball and collected baseball cards. Growing up I remember he could recall batting averages and ERAs it seemed for nearly every player and the line ups for every team and what Mickey Mantle hit in each season, both right and left handed, his fielding statistics, post season hitting averages and could do so for all the top players in each era.

Growing up for part of his life in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, Tom became a Brewers fan in addition to the Cubs and White Sox, and later, the Giants. On October 17, 1989, around 5:00 in the afternoon, Tom was walking to Game 3 of the World Series when the earth started to move.

Several years prior to that he was among the 43000+ to watch Fred Lynn hit the only grand slam in All-Star game history at Comiskey Park in 1983. He was a regular in Arizona and Florida when it came time for the Boys of Summer to play Spring ball.

He had a knack for numbers and statistics and baseball contains plenty of those.  Our grandfather would take us to Opening Day at Comiskey and Tom would watch and record the game in his head while his brother did so on the scoresheet in the program.

When the family went to organize his personal effects, there were several piles “To File”.

Receipts, financial statements, baseball cards, ticket stubs, photos, invitations and letters for reunions. Not that they were in any particular order, but were intended to be filed, perhaps before Spring Training started or perhaps during the next off season.

The records and mementos likely had their own rightful place. A draw, bookshelf or filing cabinet but records of his life and keepsakes for now were to be filed.

Pathologists by our nature collect things. We collect gross specimens, slides, articles, journals, trade publications, magazines, interesting cases, photographs of those cases, administrative documents, policies and procedures.

For some of us, those are all collectively put together in a bin (or an office) called “To File”.

To be filed another day. When the slides are fewer, the phone calls less frequent, the meetings cancelled or the stack of journals is reduced to something more manageable.

I think in a way, when the time comes, we will all have something left to file.

And it will remain that way.