Started out the day with a plan to clear some of the clutter from my office. That ended up being a nostalgic detour through some of my moms papers stashed in an ancient PeeChee folder. I found old passports, immunization records, birth announcements, documents from her immigration to first Canada, then the United States, and poetry. Poems from my father that she had kept, a poem from my grandfather to my father on the sorrows of aging, a letter to my mom from a cousin all in verse. Poems meticulously typed on Onion skin paper to safely and economically make the journey overseas. Google Photos and Google lens are now helping me translate the German and I have a new project.
Beyond that though it has me wondering about what artifacts we leave each other now? Photographs and memes, a private chat conversation, an email? The technology changes, but we all long to preserve that piece of ourselves that is uniquely us - or so we presume. Somewhere in my garage is a stash of letters I have kept from the time before email. I may find poetry there as well, another project in my future perhaps, but I really think I just want to write more and share the stories of the people I knew who can no longer tell them.
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