Memories

When my parents were alive, more specifically my father, he was an inveterate picture taker. Problem was once taken the pictures went into albums unlabeled, and unorganized.

When my mother passed away, several years after my father and I was tasked with closing won her condo, I found more than a half dozen photo albums, some of them dating back to before my mom and dad got married. There are pictures from when they were dating, when my dad was in the war, my mom's high school and college pictures, pictures of my grand parents when they were young. Lots and lots of pictures.

The albums went to my brother who volunteered to scan them into his computer and put them on a CD for each of us. He did a very creditable job. Afterwards he distributed the albums, or at least some of the albums to each of us. He kept those that couldn't be divided up.

When I got married I also took lots of pictures, which also got stuffed into albums in the same way my father did, somewhat disorganized and unlabeled.
When my ex and I got divorced one of the things I demanded was the right to copy all the albums. When I got them I scanned some and some never quite made it back into the albums that my ex wanted back.

So... now I had almost a dozen albums, some from my cameras, some from my parents camera, some from my kids cameras. Big three-inch, three ring binders full of pictures, plus wedding albums, and misc. loose pictures. Last weekend I put all the albums in a box and gave it to my kids to divide up.
I didn't know about my parents pictures until they had passed away and it was too late to ask who was in the pictures. Most I recognized, some I did not

The problem was I never opened then albums, and with the advent of digital cameras, CDs, computers, and flickr, physical pictures seem to have become obsolete. But they still represent a bit of family history, which I felt now belongs to my kids and grand kids. Maybe they will enjoy them more than I did