Memories

If you don't get anything else out of this blog, please take heed to this one warning - don't put off until tomorrow the opportunity to learn all that you can about your older loved one's background.  Tomorrow might be too late.  We never expected 15 years ago that my mother would be gone so quickly as a result of an auto accident.  But it happened.  Now we realize that we know so little about her life and background and it is now very hard to find much out about this part of her life.  Many things are gone forever.  For example, we've heard that she missed nearly a year of school when she was an elementary student in Herndon.  But nobody knows what physical problem she had.  Two of her sisters are still living but their minds appear to have forgotten most details of mother's early years.  We did discover an extensive genealogy of her mother's ancestors (Herrolds) so fortunately we can now trace her relatives back over 500 years.  But we know little or nothing about these folks except for their names and dates.  But this week while going through pictures that my dad has, we discovered a couple of precious pictures of her as a youngster.  We never saw these before.  These are now prized possessions even though we don't know how old she was when they were taken.  I also came upon some pictures of our home in Lititz from years ago when mother had such beautiful flowers.  I had forgotten how she loved to garden and how beautiful our yard had been when we were growing up.  These pictures have brought back a flood of memories.  I've also found old pictures of relatives and times with my grandparents on both sides - good memories.  Sometimes you wish that you could roll back the years but you know you can't.  So all you can do is hold on to the memories and thank the Lord for those special times and special people in your lives.  So don't wait until it is too late to share pictures and stories and memories with your older loved ones.  And then prepare them to be passed on to your children.  If you need some practical ways to do this, please let me know - this is a topic that I love to share with groups or individuals.  Sharing these memories and history has been a special project of mine since I retired.  Again, don't wait - tomorrow might be too late.