Digital Pictures

I bought one of those digital picture frames yesterday, the kind where you can take the photos off of your camera or computer and it will display them as a slide show, with background music if you want. I brought it home, plugged it in, and immediately transferred a couple thousand pictures onto a USB stick, put it in and started watching pictures.

Pictures of my kids. Pictures of sailing. Pictures of mu adventures in the UK, Europe, the Middle East, around the US, even to South Africa. My digital picture file goes all the way back to 2002, when I was just 47, right after my first heart attack. My children are mostly teenagers then, except Ricky, who was 12 and almost a teenager. I am definitely younger, stronger, but I still seemed to have a decent sized belly, especially when the picture is at just the right angle, and my body is slouching.

What does it mean, that I spend so much time thinking of the past, remembering those days with my children, the family adventures. These mean even more to me that the large amount of international travel I have had in my life. I look at these pictures with so much love, such tender memories. I live in this place of seemingly endless sentimentality.

They say when you die that your life flashed before your eyes. I see absolutely no sense in waiting until then. I want that life to not flash before my eyes, but to roll slowly, a giant, epic motion picture, with drama, excitement, love, pain. I want the movie of my life, the slideshow of my children, the photographs of adventure all to be there, so I can see them often, remember them much, and hold them in my heart daily.

I have had a wonderful life. These pictures remind me of that. I only wish I had others, from when my children were truly small, from when they first learned to walk, to talk, to laugh. I wish I had them from when they played with each other in the back yard, climbing the fort. I wish I had the pictures from when they rode their bikes, played on swings, jumped in the snow.

The pictures I have are wonderful. But they only tell the story of the last 15 years. I want more, so many more memories. I suspect I will never get them.