for the past 7 months i have been sorting through pictures and videos that my mom had in storage for years.
i never could build up the courage to look through all of these memories since my dad died in 2000. mom never wanted to see them either because neither of us could make it through a publix commercial without crying, let alone videos of our own family. so we shrugged the memories off and stuck with focusing on making new ones... ones we could look back on and laugh to hide the pain of losing the most important man in both of our lives.
once mom passed in july of last year, i made it my duty to scan every photo i could find and now i am making copies of all of the home movies my dad made when we were kids.
let me just start by saying, i knew that my parents loved me before i took this job on.... but now i can actually see it. i FEEL the love that these two people had for me.
when i was little, i never thought much about the camera that was always in my face. as i got older, it got annoying. sadly, dad died when i was 15, so he left me at the most angsty and moody times in my life. as i look back on these videos today, i am so thankful for the constant documentation of our childhood. i wish i could thank him for all the wonderful memories that i am making today as i watch the memories from so many yesterdays ago.
it doesnt matter how we think we look on camera or what we wore or how frizzy our hair was... or why we were wearing those god-awful tommy hillfiger overalls with a white tanktop?!?!
none of that matters... its all superficial.
i tell my husband (oh yeah... i got married. thats a whole other amazingly wondeful story.) all the time how badly i wished that he could have met my dad. he knew my mom very well... probably better than most people. now i get the chance to introduce my amazing dad to him.
