Fish Like A GIRL

I have often said that so many things happen in the outdoors that there is always something more to write about. While that is true, it hit me slightly differently the other day when my sister presented me with a box of CDs and floppy disks (yes, floppy disks) that belonged to our mom.

Mom died several years ago, but much of her work as a fiction author lives on. She also wrote several books on the craft of writing. Most of her work was in the mystery genre, with some romance writing on the side.

One thing I did not know, or maybe I just did not remember, was that she also published a series of children’s books. All of them had to do with life on the farm. As a child, my mom spent her summers on her grandparents’ farm, so it made sense that she would write about those adventures. She never talked about them much when we were kids, other than to say she spent time there. I am sure she was full of stories about the farm, but for some reason never shared many of them with us. I found three of the books in that children’s series in the box my sister gave to me.

The floppy disks were the smaller, hard-cased ones, so not quite as old as the other variety, but very outdated. There was a floppy disk reader in the box as well, which plugged in via USB. But unfortunately, none of the disks I tried were readable. 

I have just started looking through the CDs, a project that may take months if not a year. I have found some of her work that I have read, and other pieces that I had not seen before. Shortly after she passed away, my stepdad gave me her computer to take all of her information off of it. He knows nothing about computers and truly does not care to learn. At the age of almost 80, I think he will be just fine without trying to fill his head with that type of useless thing.

When he gave me that computer to clean up, he said she had “a ton” of stories she had never finished. He asked if I might think about finishing them for her someday. I thought about the idea and, honestly, I was not sure. Could I do them justice? Would the story take the plot line that she had envisioned? And if it did not, would that truly matter? 

I was filled with questions, of course, but simply took everything off of the computer and put it on an external hard drive. I have revisited that hard drive here and there, but never really dug into it.

Now, here is this box of CDs sitting next to my desk in my home office. Maybe it is the passage of time, or maybe it is just that I am older now and likely care a bit less about what anyone may think of how I would finish one of those stories. But I have been looking at that stack of CDs for the last few days, again with questions. Would I find anything there I might want to complete? Would I find anything there that may be disturbing? Might there be some things I do not want to know about my mom, that are just better off living out their days untouched on those CDs? Everyone had skeletons in their closet, I suppose, and some of those are best left alone. Do I suspect there is anything horrible? No. But there is part of me that does not want to touch them. Another part of me, is super interested in finding the stories without endings. She, too, had so much more to write about. If I do not finish those stories, or at least look for them, they are stories that will remain untold. That is a sad thought to me, in a way. An untold story, a character who never gets to find his fate, or a twist on a plot line that will engross readers for years to come and bring them on an adventure they could never imagine could all sit forever.

I am sure, on some cold snowy day this winter, I will grab a stack of the CDs, a glass of wine, and start the long process of looking through them all, searching for the nuggets of gold I am sure she had penned, but was unable to finish. 

Who knows what I may find in all of that. Bringing together a mix of her ideas and mine might be just the thing to create a great storyline. It makes me wonder — each time an author dies, how many stories were left to be told and who will tell those stories?

Beckie Gaskill may be reached at [email protected] or [email protected].