Memories in Boxes and Shopping Bags

Photo albums and high school yearbook

My sister walked in my house this week laden with boxes and shopping bags full of stuff. Classify the stuff collectables, mementos, souvenirs, or what the items actually are – a life’s legacy. Pictures, most of them photos in frames, costume jewelry, photo albums, plaques, and miscellaneous, uncategorized items. All these things are witness to a century of living, testimony to my Mom’s life.

Mom lived four months beyond her 100^th birthday. Born in 1925, she experienced the  Depression as a child and World War II as a college woman. She was a young bride and mother through the ‘quiet decade’ of the 1950s, and later returned to school during the cataclysmic ‘60s. She became a professional worker, grandmother, volunteer, traveler, and finally retiree during the last years of the 20th century and the first quarter of the 21st century.

My sister and I laughed at a picture of a very young Mom and an unnamed girl, both about five years old, playing in someone’s backyard. Who was that other girl? A friend? Cousin? Neighbor? We examined Mom’s high school graduation picture and the activities she participated in, and never realized her passion for bridge reached back so many years. We couldn’t ask her why. When and where did she first learn to play?

We found a picture of Mom with a young man not Dad. Who was he? A fleeting date, a long-time suitor, a friend or a relative?

Mom did not talk a lot about her early life. We met a couple of her closest cousins when we were kids, but although she was part of a large extended family on her mother’s side – one of seven or eight children – the siblings and their families did not keep in touch through the years. 

We flipped through framed pictures of friends and relatives long gone. Some we knew, many we did not recognize. We were children and uninterested in older folks’ lives. Most of the pictures sprinkled in albums, either glued or loose, were unmarked. No names, no dates, leaving us to guess about the who, when, where, and circumstances.  

There were pictures of young couples in their teens, twenties, and thirties enjoying time at the beach and mountain lakes, getting married, and showing off their babies. 

Certificates and plaques attested to Mom’s life as a valuable volunteer to several organizations. What do we do with these things now?

There were a lot of pictures of the grandchildren and great-grandchildren at play, occasionally dressed for an important family occasion or the holidays, keepsakes for the next generation or two. Decades from now individuals will sort through boxes of faded photos, stare and wonder, who are these people?

But today we smile and recall life with Mom, mostly happy times but occasional rocky periods, and honor a special woman who modeled a life well-lived through a century of turbulence.

Mom at 100