Before digital cameras, Adrian and I would take snapshots and have two of each printed so we could send some to the kids and other relatives who were in the photos. Then we’d put the photos back in their envelope and put the envelope in a drawer or on a shelf and never look at it again.
In my parents’ time, professional photographs were taken at important moments, like graduating from eighth grade. I have one like that of my mother.
When my parents were in their eighties, they started giving photographs away to their children when we’d come to visit. After my mother died at 89, we collected the significant ones and I photoshopped them and made copies for everyone.
Later, for a family reunion, my nephew Roy’s partner asked us all to send her our family photos and she made a wonderful video of them that I still cherish.
By the time Adrian and I moved to Ithaca in 2000, we had boxes of photos and photo albums from both our previous lives separately and our life together.
Adrian’s son Dan tried to organize his old family photos on one of his visits. He at least separated them into envelopes that made sense. And then the boxes went back into the closet again.
One year—two or three years before Adrian died, perhaps—we took out all those little envelopes of colored photos we’d taken over the years and spread them out on the dining room table in an attempt to organize them.
But invariably, you get caught up in the looking and remembering. The actual organizing becomes secondary, and is too immense a job. Organize how? And then what?
The most we’d ever accomplish was to weed out the most awful ones. The rest we’d put back in the envelopes and store again.
After digital cameras became popular, there were no more physical prints to worry about. Everything was stored on the computer. And then forgotten.
Since Adrian died thee years ago, I’ve wanted to make a photo-story of his life—of our life together. I thought I’d put it in a video, but this week I started to put it together as a web page that anyone in the family could go to.
It’s a huge project, but one I love doing. I can look at a photo of him now and smile, not break down in tears. Sometimes I do cry, but that's fine, too. There is a real joy in putting this together.
He’s looking at me now, from my computer screen.
