We’ve all watched the sad news. Tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, fires, floods. Terrible loss of life and property. Some will recover, others never will. Most people interviewed are grateful to be alive and that they have their families. Many have lost families and friends. All say they don’t care about their “things,” that they are just glad to be alive.
A follow-up story on the victims of the tornadoes not long ago focused on a woman who sat on her front porch, or what was left of it. She was still stunned and not sure what was in her future but she assured the reporter she was grateful to be alive. Something about that woman has haunted me ever since. I can’t stop thinking about her and I finally figured out why.
She was an older woman, probably hadn’t worked for many years, and seemed fragile. She may not have been fragile before the tornado but certainly was after. She looked around at the empty space where her home once stood and her eyes just said it all. She lost everything and she was possibly in her 80s and now what?
After the recent storms and fires and earthquakes and so forth I took a stroll around my house and property. I looked at what I’ve accumulated in the sixteen years since I’ve been in my house and was surprised to see what I’ve accomplished when looking at it all with a new “eye,” with the old woman’s eye. I looked around my little share of the planet as she looked around her spot during that report and tried to see what she saw.
Most of what I have is comprised of furnishings, indoors and out, and the basics needed to live in a home. Most of that can be replaced over time with insurance and a bit of budgeting. However, what about our keepsakes? I know that’s what she was thinking. “What about all my little memories and photos and keepsakes?” If she wasn’t, I was thinking it for her.
I have a photo collection comprising 100 years of family photos. Last year I put them all on disks which took about six months, many hours a day. I wore out my scanner. Each was placed in a chronological group and when each group was organized I made DVD movies with music of the accompanying era. I have 33 DVDs, numbered, labeled, and stored, along with 33 matching .jpeg disks. With the separate .jpeg disks I can select a photo I want to share or print easily. When I finished the task I was struck with how valuable all of the photos and movies were---our family history. Of my belongings they are the most precious to me. Along with those disks I have a few albums, one presented to me by my mom a few years ago. I also scanned that album into the collection but the album is in my bookcases with a few others.
After this project I made copies of it all and gave an entire set to each of my kids and a set to my mom. I did that so they would be able to view the collection but also for safekeeping. I can’t imagine losing those precious photos and if something happened to my home I know that I have them safely tucked away elsewhere. It’s a huge relief.
But that’s not all. I have an enormous music collection spanning almost my entire life. All of it has been placed on my computer and portable digital player with a few exceptions---a closet full of cassette tapes and CDs. I know I can buy equipment that will transfer those old formats but I haven’t started yet. The collection is too large for me to grab in the event of an emergency though hopefully I can grab my computer. You never know what is going to happen and perhaps I wouldn’t be home.
Naturally I have all the important papers we all have and important computer files and all my original drafts of my three published novels. How do we get those back? We don’t mostly. I suppose I could store some of these items offsite but I’d want to duplicate those items too and place them---where?
But as I strolled around what really got to me was the little keepsakes tucked here and there. Plaster handprints of the kids’ tiny hands in kindergarten, knickknacks my grandmother gave me that she received as wedding gifts, fun birthday gifts from friends I’ve gotten over the years, an afghan my grandmother made for me, a collection of house plants, some older than my kids, a few pieces of costume jewelry that are not worth anything except sentimental value, art that means the world to me, much of it created by my sister and in particular a piece she painted for the cover of my first book, and the list goes on.
At some point as we recover from a disaster we will think of all of those lost things. One by one, day by day, these treasures will creep into our consciousness. We may be grateful we are alive but we will be in mourning for some of those things that can never be replaced. We won’t mourn our sofas or chairs (unless it’s the rocker we rocked our babies in), we won’t mourn our electronics (except for the files contained in them), we won’t mourn lamps (unless they are family heirlooms), tables (unless it’s the table we grew up with and carried carefully with us everywhere we moved in our adult lives), and countless other items that we may forget momentarily while immediate issues present but may haunt us for a very long time as we move to our new futures.
For me, of all the “things” I have that I believe I might miss the most (because my photos are safe) would be Jo Jo. Jo Jo has been with me for 66 years. I’ve never lost him or misplaced him. He’s with me right now as I type. He’s my first teddy bear purchased by my parents when they learned I was on the way. He’s simply irreplaceable.
So my heart goes out to all those people who have lost their photos, and ash trays their kids made in elementary school (yes, kids used to make ash trays for gifts in school), and movies of the kids’ first steps, and silly souvenirs they brought home from their honeymoons, and hand sewn aprons their grandmas made, and quilts their great-great-grandmas made, and their moms’ wedding ring, and of course all the lost teddy bears.
www.sharonstrawhandgarner.com[No part of this content may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author. Blog series began in March 2009.]
