When I was in the hospital at the age of 43 giving birth to my only child, my son Ben, the nurse asked me if I wanted to keep the staples to my C-section.

I paused. I thought about the time that I had gone through the closet of my first apartment in New York in order to separate good shoes from bad. I had ended up with two bags full of shoes; one to throw away and one to keep. A couple of days later I discovered that I had thrown away both bags—not only the bag with the shoes I no longer wanted, but the bag with my canvas boots, my winter boots, my loafers, my high heels, my little green sandals, my velvet dress shoes, my sneakers, my flip flops, and, as a result, now owned only the pair of white thin-strapped sandals with gold buckles that I had on my feet.

I thought about the time that I was in a fairly popular band and I decided that if they ever did a "Behind the Music" on me, they'd need all the best photos of me that had ever been taken. So I went through my photo albums, and all the envelopes and boxes of photos I owned and picked out my favorites—all the most flattering photos of myself from childhood on and put them in a big manila envelope. Within a few days, that envelope disappeared. I don't know whether my boyfriend mistook it for garbage or what exactly happened to it but I never saw it again. That was over 15 years ago and every time I move into a new house I think that by some miracle, the envelope will turn up. It never has.

Do I want to keep the staples to my C-section?

I thought about the guinea pig that my husband and I had rescued from the pet store—the one that was getting picked on by the other guinea pigs and how the vet had later asked me if I wanted to save her ashes when they cremated her after she died of cancer.

I thought about the recipe box my mom reminded me of when I was 41 and how I couldn't wait to get it out of her attic—cooking being one of my favorite things to do, having made up dozens of wonderful recipes in my teenage years—cakes and breads and pies and soups and stews and casseroles. A potato bread that was so delicious that I thought, if I wanted to, I could turn the recipe into something to sell to restaurants and local shops. When I got into her attic and opened the box, it was virtually plundered of all the recipes and contained only the section markers and some blank cards. As I sat there stunned, I had a vague recollection of taking the recipes out of the box some twenty years earlier so I could take them on the plane to my apartment in Philadelphia without the weight of the box. What ended up happening to them I have no idea.

But it's been a pattern—somehow I manage to end up with the shell of the thing that matters and not the thing itself—the recipe box with no recipes, the photo album with no photos, the clean closet devoid of shoes. I pictured myself at the end of my life with nothing left but my guinea pig's ashes and the staples to my C-section. Do I want to keep them?

"No thanks," I said.