Down Memory Lane

Day 142– When I left home, almost a year ago I took almost nothing with me, just two small suitcases. I removed my personal stuff from the house and put it in storage, but I didn’t take anything that was common stuff, I figured that I am the one who left and I leave behind too much pain as it is, do I didn’t want to cause any more pain by taking things that where dear to my husband as well. That included albums. I decided to scan all the albums and this way to have an electronic copy of them all. The only problem was that it was a monumental size work and I didn’t finish it, to be more precise, I didn’t finish even half of it. And so I left it behind but it keeps nagging me, I didn’t finish the mission, and more importantly, I don’t have pictures of my family throughout the years, of 31 years of marriage.
So since I have a lot of time on my hands and I am here alone, I decided to complete the job. For the past two days I scan albums from morning till night, I also fix them, since some of them are old and pictures are falling. I realized that there are few more positive outcomes.

·         First of all – our children are all adults now and none of them lives at home anymore, so they don’t have a copy of their own history – this way I can create a copy for each one of them

·         And the second one – the pictures are fading. The chemicals they used on some of them are not good I guess, and some of the pictures are in bad shape. This way, on electronic form, we keep it as good as it is right now, and maybe I can even restore some of them

·         Third one – I was always paranoid about the pictures, what if we’d have fire, or flooding, or earthquake and the pictures will be destroyed. For that reason I always kept the negatives as well, but now it is so much easier. We will have five copies in different locations; the pictures are much safer this way

·          And the last one – we don’t really take the time to look at albums, but if it runs on the computer or in an electronic picture, we will see it, so we bring back lost memories as well

I was scanning the pictures and the memories came flooding in. some good, some not so, but I had a great time. We forget so much, it is actually scary. The pictures are serving as a memory holder, and so I relived days long gone, events and times long forgotten; few tears, many laughs and especially wonderment, how thirty years had gone by.
I am thankful for this great idea that I was able to carry out. Instead of being sad that my daughter does not have much time for me to come and see the baby, when all I got here are less than two weeks, I found something great to do with my time that I needed to be here to do it. I am thankful that no one was here with demands on my time, and so I was able to scan thousands of pictures and over twenty albums. I am thankful for this opportunity to revisit my past in a very pleasant way and to enjoy so many moments of tenderness one more time. I am thankful we were always so good about taking pictures and so were able to capture so many wonderful moments from our lives. Coming from families of holocaust survivors I know what the meaning of living without any picture of loved ones and I am thankful we have them and can transfer them to the next generation.