Thursday, June 7, 2012

Hoarding vs Archiving

It probably says a lot about me that the thing that finally goaded me into posting was a webcomic.  This is the first post in 2012.  My Mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in March and she died of it on May 24.  I'm still not sure what to post about that.  I think I'll stick to her situation as regards the comic,

There are two things that are related.  One, from the time she started feeling bad*, she started going through all of the things she had accumulated, throwing things out, selling things at a flea market, and giving things away.  I really appreciate that.

Two, she sent two boxes of photos, a box of 8mm home movies, and a box of vinyl albums home with me in March.  She had already given me two boxes of photos, which we had gone through together and labeled, and I thought that was the last of them.  No.  There were still two large boxes under her bed filled with photos.  Some of them must have been ones she inherited when her mother, my Grandma B, died.

A fair bit of the inherited photos are not labeled.  I'm guessing that they were photos that Grandma B inherited when Grandpa B's mother died.  Grandma B was pretty good about labeling. 

Now I look at these pictures and have no clue who these people are.  One of them is on a small piece of glass, about 1.5" x 1.5", instead of on paper.  I suspect that I can identify some of them through the labeled pictures, but it's going to take awhile, and I have my Mother's estate to settle first. 

I think about the boxes of Grandma L's photos and letters that I still have to go through, and the box of Aunt D's things.  Now these.  Then I look at the webcomic and wonder if I'm archiving the family heritage or hoarding things for others to toss after I'm gone.  There's no way to know.  It will depend on whether anyone in my children's or grandchildren's generation becomes interested. 

Note to self:  Find Mom's Christmas Stocking pattern.  Learn to knit.

* the length of time it took her doctor to diagnose her is a completely different rant