Saving the memories
Kim is talking about places lost in the mists of time– once favorite haunts, now become parking lots and starbucks.
We live in a world that changes so fast you just about have to have wings to stay on top of it- but we need to remember not to lose those memories.
Kim is working on a project he calls “My Biographer”, and while he hasn’t mentioned it, I hope it’s working well for him. As soon as I can get someone to massage the code for me I’ll be putting an ad on my site for him.
And it brings to mind a problem I have.
I have been trying to find as much out as I can about my family- I have an unusual enough name that most people who share it are blood relatives. I regret that not enough attention has been paid to the generation which has just been- more or less- lost. And Kim, starting the ‘My Biographer” project, has made me think: If I don’t do something about it, THIS generations meories, stories, etc. will be lost- and in a generation, that loss will be irretrievable.
So I’m trying to write that history, of my family. If I had the money, I’d have Kim do the whole family- but at the very least, I’m trying to gather what information I can.
And it;’s not just about people. It’s about the family farm- a square mile of Illinois bottomland that fed and raised nine strapping kids, a brick house with a copper roof, a pair of clydesdales named Nell and Bell. Eating strawberries on Calvin’s farm. Picking same for cash, which got spent on ice cream. Homemade slingshots and family reunions with watermelons the size of children.
THe stories, the moments frozen in your memory- who will keep them? who will record them so that your great grandchildren will know who you were?
You will. You must. We cannot lose the memories- the people and places. The personalities. The family is almost lost, and this is the kind of thing that can stop that decline. Let Kim do it for you, if you can afford it, but if not, write down what you can. You’re too important- and your memories are- to be lost forever.
Jim Rohn has two pieces of relevant advice — journals and pictures. And now, so many of us have lived in the “now” with little thought for posterity that we’re playing catch-up.
M
“Write your life…”
My mother’s side of the family had a hard-on for forgetting the past and scattering off to the four winds. I didn’t even find out what the original family name was (they didn’t just Americanize their name, they totally pilfered a very short, extremely common English name) until I was in my late 30’s. Now I have an uncaptioned photo album I inherited from my mother circa 1920-1945 with photos that have zero meaning due to their anonymity. Being that they all looked like carbon copies of their father (both the boys and the girls), it’s a royal b**ch wondering who is who. No one wants it, so here it sits with me.
On my father’s side there’s more family cohesion and honor for the past, but that’s disappearing with the generation after mine. For them, if it didn’t happen since they were born, it’s worthless.
This is a 15 minute world anymore, and I’m a stick in the mud traditionalist in many ways. I’m a century too late.