Memories shared

  I was given a collection of 35mm slides that belonged to my wife's Uncle George. I purchased a little machine that converted them too digital. With the help of my wife the people on those slides were identified as best as we could. A very few were labeled as to the person or date taken. There were also pictures of places, some recognizable, others not. There were clues to all that in the background of the pictures. You can see the automobiles and take a guess on the decade. The manner of dress and other visual clues is there. Christmas pictures are always obvious with the decorations. So, I decided to assemble those photographs into a slide show. My thought was to share them with other family members. You see Uncle George had been a lifelong bachelor, no children for him. Those surviving him were generally nieces and nephews, and precious few of them are still with us today that remember Uncle George. 

  It was a sobering experience I'll say that for it. When you stop to think about it all, it can be depressing. You realize just how transient your own life is. What I was looking at were his memories. Each slide, each photograph a single moment in time, his time. Those in the photograph may or may not remember that time depending upon the age when they were taken. Particularly poignant are the Christmas photographs, the smiling faces of the children with their gifts, the tree covered in tinsel, and the decorations. All those little faces are grown today, "old" people. People like me. Other pictures were vacations, picnics, and various outings. All without context except what my imagination assigned to them. No one left to ask, no one left to answer those questions.

  I did complete that process, making a slide show and adding my comments to that. The sobering part came after that. How many would know Uncle George and what these slides represent? What I mean is, who would want to look at the slides of a stranger, even if that stranger is a distant relative? That is what I'm thinking about. There is nothing historical about those pictures, Uncle George enjoyed no fame. He was like the majority of us in this world, living his life, enjoying what pleasures it offered and anxious to share those moments with others. He did enjoy taking pictures, later making video recordings, and sharing them with whoever came to visit him. In the final years of his life, he gradually lost his vision to macular degeneration. Things became dimmer and dimmer until finally the difference between the brightest light and darkness was barely distinguishable. He lost his ability to look at his memories and the slides sat idle. The videos had sound, of course, and he could listen to them. Perhaps that served as some comfort. 

 All in all, the whole experience was different than what I thought it would be. I'm not sure what I thought it would be, but I didn't think it would affect me in the way it has. Maybe I'm just getting old and sentimental. At the conclusion of that slide show I say, Uncle George your memories are safe. That's the way I'm going to leave that. 

  I summed up the whole process with this thought, "So many places, so many memories captured in time. Snap shots of the past shared to the future, just old photographs" It is what the photographs represent that is important. Now you can't remember what you never knew, that is true, but you can imagine what that memory may have been. They really are memories shared.