Muffler Belts and Headlight Fluid: Photograph(ic) Memories

Sunday, September 7, 2014

Photograph(ic) Memories

If you read this blog regularly, you know that I have lost both my Father and my Mother in the past eight months. With that, came the difficult task of sorting through their belongings and determining what to do with them.

Working together, my sisters, Christy and Lisa, my brother-in-law, Randy, my wife, Judy, and I have made tremendous progress on what was an overwhelming chore. One facet of job was to compile and organize the family photos.

Let me just say here that I love photographs. I love taking them and I love looking at them. I love cataloging them and sequencing them. I love the reminiscing, laughing and crying that they bring. Most of all, I love sharing them!

Fortunately, I had started the process of sorting through my parents' photographs some time ago. Despite my mother's admonitions, I had secretly (I thought) checked out some of the family photo albums, taken the photographs out, scanned them, reinserted them back into the albums and returned the albums. I had a pretty good head start on scanning these early memories.

I am so happy that I had done so because it made the task of photo tributes at my Mom's and Dad's respective funerals so much easier. I don't know how or if we could have pulled those together in time if I hadn't done so.

But we found so many, many more photographs when we began sifting through my parents' belongings. I found photos of my father's childhood, my mother's childhood and of both sets of grandparents' early days in addition to many more of my sisters and me. There are photos of family gatherings, landmark events (First communions, graduations, birthdays, etc.), childhood friends and extended family. There are photos of community and region events and landmarks. I felt like the treasure hunter that found the jackpot!

So I have been very busy scanning photos over the past few months. In doing so, I have had the opportunity to relive many childhood memories. I will be sharing some of my favorite photos from this plunder in the coming weeks. Some will come with a short description while others don't need it. I'll save the thousand words in those cases and let the photos speak for themselves.

Please feel free to chime in with the comments on these photos. Do they remind you of a certain time in your childhood? Do they evoke some early memory? Did you have a similar story or experience? Hit the comment button below and share!

Enjoy!