The Things We Leave Behind

Every spring I vow to myself that this will be the year I drastically pare down the "stuff" I've accumulated, though so far I've been less than successful.  Oh, I throw plenty away, too - old birthday cards, wedding programs, funeral mass cards and magazines, but I'm still left with too many things I can't seem to bring myself to part with.

On the closet shelf in one of our guest rooms there are about seven boxes filled with an assortment of photographs.  There is another box like it in the closet under the stairs and another one still in the garage.  These photos - some of which are horribly bad - are a potpourri of my life.  There are my baby pictures, chunky monkey baby Linda in a sundress and bonnet (what can I say - it was the Fifties); my sister and I at about 7 and 9 years old respectively with our pixie haircuts in matching short sets; wedding pictures for my parents and Mike and I and scads of miscellaneous photos of aunts, uncles, cousins, friends - you name it.  There are also a sizeable number of old family photos that I've inherited of my grandparents and their siblings, most of whom were long gone by the time I was born.  On the back in faded blue ink there will be a short description - "At Cedar Lake" or "Chicago, 1911." 

It's sentimental, I know, to hold on to these pictures of people I never met, but who hold a blood connection to me.  I'll study them - relatives I've only heard of by name, frozen in time on a Kodak print with their glossy black and white finish and white crimped edges.  What were they like, I wonder.  Were they funny and nice?  Hard working or cavalier? What hardships did they struggle with that are barely hinted at with a half smile or troubled eyes?  I know some of their stories, the ones my parents shared with us anecdotally as I was growing up, but that's pretty much the extent I know about their lives.  Often, especially in the case of a more distant relative, an entire life would be distilled into one memorable fact - "Aunt Lizzie was so young when she was married that her husband would come home to find her still playing with dolls."

It got me thinking about what would happen to our entire collection of photographs once Mike and I are gone.  I feel more of a connection to some of the people in the oldest family photos because of their connection to my parents in their own childhoods and the faint memories they shared with me.  That connection won't really be there when my own children sort through the boxes of photos and casually throw old pictures of people they never heard of into large garbage bags.  It makes a little sad.  I imagine my children and grandchildren holding on to a picture or two of Mike and I as children or at our wedding - feeling that it doesn't seem right to throw them all away, but not knowing quite what to do with them either.  After all, today's generation saves images on a cloud, not in boxes on closet shelves to be brought out after dinner on holidays to pass around and evoke memories.

I understand that with each generation that passes, those that came before us are mostly just faceless names.  We know they existed and if we really think about it, that they had lives filled with happiness and sadness, dreams and hopes, but overall, they have no bearing on our present day lives.   I wonder, though, if some future great grandchild that I will never know personally will run across one of these pictures of me (one that saved the cut from being tossed in the trash) and hear a sentence or two about my life - encapsulated into a short string of words.  What will those words be? 

I guess I'm not really ready to let these photographs and the lives they represent go quite yet.  Maybe I never will and it will end up being someone else's job, and that's okay too.  In the meantime, I'll savor the life moments I've been given and leave the sentence or two of my legacy to those who are yet to come.