Community Chat

[bikerbabe]

No. No one after me.

[Mom2Dogs]

My brother 'interviewed/chatted' with mom before she died, he asked lots of questions and video taped her doing something we always got a kick out of her doing.  He taped the chat he had with her.

[BExplorer]

Sort of – I scrapbook all of our photos. I also do some journaling along with the photos. My kids who are now adults sometimes pull those scrapbook albums off the bookshelves and can spend hours pouring through the pages containing all of our memories.

[Mom2Dogs]

I love looking at my old photo albums...all photos are dated along with names of people in the photo.

[smoochy]

Sidebar: My mom wrote her own obituary about a year before she died. It was a rambling tome that was too long for the newspaper to print without cutting it. It went on for pages and pages. A novella, if you will. She basically began, "I was born..." and chronicled every thing she did, said and thought for 80 years. In minute detail. She did a fair amount of embellishing and rearranging facts to make the story better. 🙄🤥 It was hysterical 😬 Her reason for the do it yourself obit? "I don't trust you people to write it the way I want it". You people being her loving family. Oh she was something else. 

[GenXmuse]

@on the bay  @LindaSal and @walker 

Just wanted to thank you for your condolences about my mom. She had dementia but as is typical with this disease, she had a very keen memory of things in the past and was a lot more open with sharing than she was before, so although it was difficult to see her decline, I have memories of our talks and the things I learned about her that are very precious. When I feel stronger, I'll write those down too. 

Thanks again 💚

[ThinkingOutLoud]

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@proudlyfromNJ wrote:

I hear what you are saying. Besides the stories I have photos back to late eighteen hundreds of my Grandfather as a young boy and my Grandma in the twenties with her little kids (my Mom). Also have trunk Great Great Grandma brought over from Germany with her children. When I go, it all will be thrown away. No one cares and no one wants anything. Sad for me.

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@proudlyfromNJ  and anyone else this applies to:

Call your local library and/or genealogical society. There are people who see what you have as valuable and will help with it/take it or point you in the right direction so these things aren't lost.

[patbz]

I come from a family that always documented our story with many photos. My Dad, born in 1910, married in 1936, was an avid photographer so there are tons of photos from 1930s onward. I took up the hobby before I was 10 and also took hundreds of photos while I worked overseas in Germany, Okinawa and Korea. Most of my photos are well documented as I sent them home in letters starting in late 1960s. Been very lucky to live an interesting and varied life. Think I'll suggest to DH that we do the question thing and have books made for next Christmas.