Mourning

I went the other day to the photo shop picked up a CD of photos I'd had them convert from some old slides I found last year at Rita's house. When I went to add them to my electronic "Family Picture album" I discovered it was gone. Also all the photos I'd taken since getting any digital camera and pre-digital photos from holidays that I'd scanned.

I had moved these it to a memory stick to save space on the PC. In the rush to get ready for going to Michigan, I copied photos I could use in finishing off my draft blogs (only the stick ran out of space before it got to the useful photos).

I bought another memory stick in the US and used it to store photos my cousin Norma kindly shared of my Dad's ancestors along with her genealogy research notes, but then somehow lost that little black stick. It must have fallen out of my pocket somewhere. Fortunately I'd saved the scanned images on her hard drive.

However my other memory sticks were full. I deleted a folder of pictures thinking it was my copied pictures, not all the others. It did seem strange that they took 12 minutes to delete...

Gone are all the pictures from Prague, from Germany, Bill's Route 66 Birthday Tour, Bill's birthday weekend at Kettlewell. Gone are the holiday snaps of places I scanned and discarded, pictures of Rita's house as it was when she lived there, pictures of all of Grandmother's things that were in Rita's house, pictures of last Christmas and whatever I photographed in January or February of this year. Gone are the silly photos of Mom's and my collection of Christmas tree ornaments, painstakingly named with the year they were purchased, in case they get broken.

On the upside, I still have my family photographs in paper form; I can re-scan and save them. I threw away only pictures of places, not of the people who matter to me. There are huge numbers of photos from previous years still waiting to be scanned. At this writing, none of those Christmas ornaments are broken. I can photograph them and label the pictures again. Jack still lives in Rita's house and, to my knowledge, still has Grandmother's things. I still had the experience of the trips we took and the places we saw. There are a few photos on this weblog. Bill may have some photos somewhere.

No one else has died. I didn't even lose things, only images of things, places and experiences. It will be a relatively small thing once I get it in it's proper perspective. I am largely angry with myself at being so thoughtless and inept. I'm disgusted with all things computer-related.

I found comfort eventually by turning off the computer and doing some housework. How strange is that?