Took a walk down memory lane today :)

[Colleen]

I've never been one to display a lot of family pictures in my home but today when I was in the basement, I was looking for something in a tote marked, "David and Colleen's pictures". It's a good sized tote and it's filled with photo envelopes of pictures I've taken through the years. You know the kind...the ones taken with a REAL camera and then developed at a drug store or somewhere? I've been avoiding going through this tote because I was afraid of the emotions that I thought would make me cry or depress me. However.....

I started opening envelopes and the pictures didn't make me cry nor depress me. They made me smile. There were so many pictures of my sweet husband and they brought back wonderful memories of places we went, things we did and family gatherings. I even found a couple empty picture frames and put some pictures of him and me in them and brought them upstairs to display in the livingroom.

We often talked about what to do with all those old pictures. Should we just throw them away? Will the kids even look at them? Well, I'm glad we didn't get rid of them because I'm sure I'll be going through them again and I think the kids will have a good time looking at them after I'm gone.

Do you keep all pictures or go through them? I had forgotten about many of them. I even talked to myself saying, "Oh, yes...I remember that." Maybe I'll have a good cry later....maybe not

 

[jujube]

I've been slowly over the years paring down the zillions of photos I seem to have accumulated. I'm trying to keep "representational" photos and get rid of what are essentially duplicates.

 

[Teacher Terry]

I went through all my albums and made each one of my kids their own album and gave it to them. I kept the other albums and when I die they can decide what to do with them. I did throw out the crappy pictures that were blurry, etc.

 

[Debrah N.]

We had a dozen old photo albums and after one move they got stored in the barn loft for a winter while we were doing renovations on the house. Mice got into some but my husband managed to get many onto the computer where he did corrections and editing to clean them up. But this is before 'the Cloud' so when the photo program they were stored on became obsolete and then my computer that they were on died of old age, poof! all my pics disappeared too. I think my daughter might have a disk of them somewhere, but her house is an absolute disaster of disorganization so I doubt I'll ever see them again.

 

[OneEyedDiva]

Yes, I remember cameras! I've even held on to a couple for old time's sake. I'm glad to read that going through those pictures made you smile rather than be sorrowful. That's what happens over time. The happy memories overshadow the grief, if only for a little while. Even that little while provides a much needed respite.

I still have tons of old photos taken with cameras. Some of them I've made digital copies of, put them in my Google Photos and posted them on Facebook in a family photos group I created. My relatives love seeing them. There are many branches to that side of my family's tree and those photos have us interacting with each other. We're spread out across the country outside the U.S. so many relatives only know each other from FB and interactions in the group. I have pictures that family members from each branch of the tree can relate to, bringing happy memories to them. They are awed by some that I've posted. I inherited those pictures from my father and grandmother's collection.