Faded Photographs, Letters and Feelings… Gone Like Yesterday

I'm so grateful that my brother Carl assisted me with going through the boxes and bags of items from the garage of my own home. I don't know why it was not surprised – – actually I had written off these materials of items I would probably never see again therefore I had already forgotten them but essentially the items in the boxes were the contents of to file cabinet drawers of where I had been stashing mementos and letters for almost 30 years. It's amazing how much stuff a person files away. I do know that I would've been totally overwhelmed had I tried to do this on my own.

My brother set me up in the grudge for he had built some flat services for his woodworking shop which worked ideally for a place to set the box. Carl would hand me the hanging folder which held the file or files in question I put the file then ponder what to do with the remains. This is hard there were collected files of letters from kids, Parents, aunts and uncles and grandparents. Many of the items are things you would receive when your parents/loved one dies and then you get this box of all the letters you'd written them, or cards are whatever. You don't know what to do with them so you throw them in the garage sure the attic until someone who is coldhearted but smart does say scorching burn on these accumulated memories. That's pretty much the method I tried the move myself into. Knowing that it would be up to (most likely) Mark or Shelley to sift through and have to determine what to keep it up at the trash. Trash is such a harsh word but really, in the end, that's what it boils down to. A lifetime are more thrown into the wastepaper basket which keeps getting emptied into the dumpster over and over as the afternoon wears on. I of course kept a few items, bundles of cards and letters a couple of journals and of course photographs. I still have a problem with a huge amount of photographs, I don't know who but somebody went through my mom stuff and thrown away boxes of photographs I would've paid the kept. I don't want this guilt of someone who wanted photographs of my past with them. But really in the end what does it matter? Finally at some point at some generation down the time flow no one's going to care are even know whose images are on the curled up photos which may survive. So to whichever cousin, sisters brothers who made the decision to toss out the photographs thanks you have my love for not having to do it myself.

Having just written this, I still can't bring myself to throw away the envelopes of photos I found. It seems like I'm violating some family rule our writers rules. So much fodder for stories and histories were in those boxes and if I had property and enough space I would keep a lot of the material I threw away yesterday even though I'd probably never write about the items but then again who knows stranger things have happened…