Boxes of Old Photos

My mother, who has Alzheimer’s, enjoys scrapbooking, although she hasn’t done much lately. During her last visit to her geriatric psychiatrist, he encouraged her to spend more time scrapbooking, which makes perfect sense to me. In light of that, I’m glad I began to help her organize her work area.

What I’m thinking about now is all of Mum’s old photos that I found in the basement, neatly piled in old boxes but unlabeled. Going through them with her will be time consuming and tedious – but potentially an excellent opportunity to connect with Mum (and Dad too) and more importantly, to stimulate her long term memory. First I must get them into photo safe storage. I’m considering Creative Memories Power Sort Box. I don’t have one of these, but a friend does. The storage I have is from Michael’s and doesn’t have the removable sections that the Creative Memories’ product does.

Reviving this Blog

Much has changed since I put this blog on hiatus. I'm truly glad I didn't entirely shut it down, although I often wondered why I didn't.

2008 was an extremely challenging year for me. I made a life decision to return to New England, where my entire family lives. By God's grace, I was offered the only job I applied for out here, with an excellent salary and generous relocation benefit. This just as the economy turned majorly sour. I do not believe this would have happened a month later than it did.

There have been numerous challenges to be sure, but this was absolutely the right thing. I love New England and feel at home here while still suffering from loneliness and missing my friends and favorite places in California. One event that has underscored the rightness of this move is my mother's diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease two days after I arrived here for good. I write on this in a dedicated blog, Fade to Memory.

One reason I'm reviving this blog is that I now believe I have a real and meaningful reason to scrapbook. Once a month I'll be visiting my mother to help her with sorting through and labeling her photos while she still remembers their details. We'll organize and scrapbook them too, although that part isn't yet clear to me. This will be my main project and I feel good about it.

For me, scrapbooking as a single person has brought about the struggle of finding meaning. The great majority of scrapbookers are married and/or mothers. I am neither. I love to take photos and scrapbook them, but who really cares about my products? Yes, some people enjoy looking at them. But I don't truly believe that they will be terribly meaningful to anyone after I'm gone from this earth. So, I'm on this slow journey to finding meaning for me in this activity I love so much. Slowly, because I have little time scrapbook and in fact have not done so for a year. The last time I scrapbooked was a year ago tomorrow.

I'm doing this project with my mother for her and the rest of my family as well as myself. I admit that and am fine with it. The joy of giving will now be a big part of scrapbooking for me.