A Suitcase Full of Photos
by Lynda Schultz
My father’s family was made up of nine children; my mother’s, of seven. Most of those aunts and uncles, some of whom I barely remember, are long since gone. My mother’s youngest sister, now going on ninety-six, is the last of either family.
When my mother died, her two remaining sisters came north to my hometown for the funeral. We spent hours looking through all the old pictures, identifying people, places, and events from the past. I had the presence of mind to write on the backs of the photos, some of the information they shared.
Today, I wish I had more than just a suitcase full of photos. I wish I had asked more questions, and written down more of the stories I heard from my family while they were still around to tell them. I wish they had written down their stories as part of the heritage that is now mine.
Parents pass on many things through genetics. We owe much of our physical make-up and personality traits to a whole line of ancestors. I’m told that in personality I take after the Schultz side of the family, my late Uncle Eddie to be specific. My brother has my mother’s ever-slender physique. He still weighs the same at sixty as he did when he was twenty-five.
Those kinds of things come naturally. Sometimes they can, and must, be modified but basically, they are ours to cherish or to despise whether we like them or not.
There are other parts of our inheritance that don’t come so easily. However, they are much more valuable. These are the memories that we have, or not, of our past. Toward the end of his life, my father "forgot" me. His mind became stuck in a distant world that I had no part in. Perhaps that was the moment when I wished that I had asked him more about himself and his past, so that I would have a record of his roots, and mine, something more than his tie clips, an old saw and sickle — and that suitcase full of photos.
There are some stories that don’t need telling, some parts of our heritage that are better locked up or better yet, thrown into oblivion. Every family has skeletons best left in that proverbial closet; some have veritable graveyards where the bones need to be left buried. Nevertheless, even the darkest past has some light somewhere, for no life was ever given without purpose.
Our children and grandchildren need to know our stories. They need to understand our roots, our beginnings, our middles, our triumphs and failures, our thoughts, dreams and realities. Those who come after us need our counsel. The truth is, the older we get the more most of us realize that our parents were smarter than we once thought they were! Sometime we come to that realization too late. Perhaps right now those children and grandchildren don’t appreciate our past as being a valuable part of their inheritance, but someday they will — hopefully while there is still someone around to ask.
Don’t wait until your kids figure out that there are things they need to know about you, or until they come up with the right questions. That might never happen. I doubt I would have ever thought to ask anyone what kind of mischief my mother got into when she was young — I always considered her to be very straight-laced. Then, someone, in one of those family conversations that I DO remember, mentioned how she used to sneak out of the house through her bedroom window at night, after everyone else in the house was asleep, to meet whoever was the current boyfriend. That piece of information helped me to understand why she was so protective of us kids, and why she always wanted to know where we were, who we were with, and when we would be home!
Begin now to write down your story, to put the names on the pictures, to prepare that family tree. Put it on paper, on a CD; record it on tape or on a flash drive. Dictate it if you have to.
Write down at least a small part of that story which makes you unique, the old-fashioned way — with pen or pencil. One of things I still cherish is one of the few letters I kept, written by my mother while I was away at school. It isn’t so much the content of the letter that impacts me as it is just having something with her handwriting on it.
What if, like me, you have no children or grandchildren who share your genes and who need to become keepers of your story and your old pictures?
Well, bestsellers have come from less fertile fields. Write your story anyway. Who knows, maybe "relatives" will suddenly come to light after you’ve made that first million.
