Many months ago, my sister Ann told me over the phone that she was tired of hauling around so many photo albums that had belonged to my mom, albums that I had put together for our mother in the 1990's. She will have been dead ten years this upcoming June, so it seemed as good a time as any to decide what to keep and what to discard from among so very many pictures.
To say our mom took, and kept, photographs would be an understatement. She carried a camera in her purse for so many years and snapped away constantly. When she got the photos developed, she often had the store print two or three, or more, copies, each time, to give to others.
I took it upon myself to buy the blank photo albums and try to organize, as best I could, the many, many photos she kept in envelopes and drawers and, yes, even shoe boxes. It took between ten and twenty albums to put them all between covers. And, once I was done, she still had a few more years of life left to keep taking more pictures.
When we were forced to move her from her apartment of the previous twenty-five years to an assisted living situation, we had to discard so much of what she had owned. All of those pictures she'd taken after I organized the first hundreds, I was forced to go through and decide whether to keep or discard all of those, and there were many more. If I did not recognize the people in the photos, I instantly tossed them. The others I had to decide if they were worth keeping or not. In many cases she'd already sent a copy to me, so I did not need to keep those either.
Now, Ann wanted to be rid of these many photo albums after she'd taken them back to Maryland when mom died in 2002, and then back out to California when she permanently moved to Indio, CA, a few years ago. Fortuantely, I knew that there were a couple of treasures among those several albums. Specifically, two of them contained many black & white images from when my sister and I were very young, infants even. Or from the decades of the 30's and 40's, long before we were born. I knew that those albums were priceless, and I would keep them myself if my sister no longer wanted custody of them.
Over the past New Year's weekend, with my Aunt Jean also visiting my sister in Indio, we all began the arduous task of pouring through each album, to keep what we wanted and toss out the rest. I looked first and then left the other two to look through what I did not want. Then my aunt took her turn and saved what she wanted. Finally, my sister looked over what was left.
However, the B&W albums I kept, except where an entire page contained pictures of my sister or of her elementary school class, companion photos to those of my own classes, when we both attended Laural Elementary School in Whittier, CA, from 1956 until 1959.
To say our mom took, and kept, photographs would be an understatement. She carried a camera in her purse for so many years and snapped away constantly. When she got the photos developed, she often had the store print two or three, or more, copies, each time, to give to others.
I took it upon myself to buy the blank photo albums and try to organize, as best I could, the many, many photos she kept in envelopes and drawers and, yes, even shoe boxes. It took between ten and twenty albums to put them all between covers. And, once I was done, she still had a few more years of life left to keep taking more pictures.
When we were forced to move her from her apartment of the previous twenty-five years to an assisted living situation, we had to discard so much of what she had owned. All of those pictures she'd taken after I organized the first hundreds, I was forced to go through and decide whether to keep or discard all of those, and there were many more. If I did not recognize the people in the photos, I instantly tossed them. The others I had to decide if they were worth keeping or not. In many cases she'd already sent a copy to me, so I did not need to keep those either.
Now, Ann wanted to be rid of these many photo albums after she'd taken them back to Maryland when mom died in 2002, and then back out to California when she permanently moved to Indio, CA, a few years ago. Fortuantely, I knew that there were a couple of treasures among those several albums. Specifically, two of them contained many black & white images from when my sister and I were very young, infants even. Or from the decades of the 30's and 40's, long before we were born. I knew that those albums were priceless, and I would keep them myself if my sister no longer wanted custody of them.
Over the past New Year's weekend, with my Aunt Jean also visiting my sister in Indio, we all began the arduous task of pouring through each album, to keep what we wanted and toss out the rest. I looked first and then left the other two to look through what I did not want. Then my aunt took her turn and saved what she wanted. Finally, my sister looked over what was left.
However, the B&W albums I kept, except where an entire page contained pictures of my sister or of her elementary school class, companion photos to those of my own classes, when we both attended Laural Elementary School in Whittier, CA, from 1956 until 1959.
