When you lose your partner, tasks envelop you in that first year. Change your bank accounts, send death certificates to Social Security and some credit card issuers and, yes, you also have to get rid of things.

The clothes came first. I remember packing up all of my husband’s dress shirts and wondering how was it possible he had so many. Then I checked the collar sizes. They went from 14 1/2 to 16. Aha, I see, he never threw out or recycled clothing. Perhaps that’s what explains the three, count’em, three tuxedos I found in the basement. Why did he ever bring them here? Where was he planning to wear them?

Then I moved on to the books. We must be one of the last generations to adore and collect books. But I doubt anyone could hold a candle to my husband. He filled seven bookcases and three Rubber Maid cabinets in our basement with books. I never counted them but there must have been somewhere between 600 and 900 of them. And since I am a believer in relieving others from such a task as getting rid of them, I began.

At first, it was easy. I mean really, a Gaelic English dictionary? The speeches of the past two hundred years of U.S. Presidents? Into the bag they went. But occasionally, (or so I thought), I’d say, “Oh, this looks interesting! I’d like to read this!”

But after I said that multiple times, I gave myself a good talking to and into the bags they went.

Some things were harder to get rid of. Arnie’s collection of Kurt Vonnegut books for example. How he loved that clever, witty, scatological and creative writer — everything he aspired to be and, I think, ultimately was.

Another example: his Raymond Chandler mysteries. The reason why he bonded so completely with Boston author Robert Parker is they were both fans of Chandler.

Books on the Hollywood Black List written by its principals, Dalton Trumbo, Gordon Kahn and others — those were hard to toss too. Arnie had written a documentary on the Black List that was nominated for an Oscar in 1974. They did not win. But that subject remained close to his heart. And Gordon Kahn’s son, Tony, became a dear friend and our best man.

Then there were our F. Scott Fitzgeralds, (we were both English majors). Some I kept, some, like a volume of F. Scott’s letters, had print too small to be read anymore by my aging eyes.

Arnie and I had different attitudes about books. I read to learn about other countries and peoples and other eras, to enjoy a wonderful story, to learn something about human nature, to be stunned by extraordinary prose. Books actually influenced me to change my mind about things, to set goals because of what I read.

Arnie loved them for all of that but also for the right turn of phrase, the artistry of the writer, the unusual-ness of the story. He loved Raymond Carver, Olga Tokarczuk (oh, to hear our book club discussion of her book called Flights. Some of us got it, some of us not.) Talking with Arnie about books was always an adventure.

It has taken a while, but so far I have taken four carloads of books off-Island and rid myself of them for a good cause. It wasn’t easy and I still have more to go but I am trying to congratulate myself for what I have erased from our basement. Thank God the Martha’s Vineyard Museum wanted his papers. But that’s another story.

With the books gone, I wonder if Arnie minds or if he would think I was somehow erasing him. But no, we were close and I know he expected me to do this. He couldn’t, anymore than he could get rid of his dress shirts.

But erase Arnie? Totally impossible!

Paula Lyons lives in Vineyard Haven.