Yesterday, I spent hours going through massive piles of photo albums, gathering images to put on display at a memorial service. I learned a couple of things. Cheap mass market cameras from anytime in the 20th century were crap and produced smudgy, blurry images. Polaroids in particular were terrible. More professional cameras that typically shot in black & white and used large format produced very nice results, but throwing them in a pile or in sticky photo albums does them no favors.
Also, my mother was quite lovely, but I already knew that.
Mom at 16
It’s also particularly sad to see a long life reduced to this brief shots of happy moments.
Must be about 1940, looks like it was shot on a Minnesota farm, before they moved west.
I know exactly where that picture was taken, in my grandparents’ house. It must be around 1950.
My parents, early 1970s, I think
Mom & Dad at the wedding of one of their kids, I don’t know which one. They were happy at all of them.
Modern cameras are amazingly good, but when you buy a cheap scanner, it’s going to die in the middle of trying to digitize hundreds of old photos.
We read the will yesterday, too. It was written in 1984 and wasn’t changed since, despite the fact that three of the family members have died since it was written. It’s vaguely written, so it’s still applicable, but it basically just says that her executor should divide her estate equally among her 6 kids. Easy, right? I’m meeting with a lawyer this morning to discuss all the details that will bite me in the butt. She wasn’t rich, so that really simplifies everything.
I’m currently dreading the viewing, a barbaric custom. People don’t look as they did in life after they’ve died, so these things are always shocking, distressing events. You definitely come away knowing your loved one is gone forever.
However, I am looking forward to the memorial event on Friday evening. Mom was well-loved, so I expect to see a lot of familiar old faces, and this may be the last grand gathering of the family. This is where Mom’s financial mediocrity is a virtue, because no on will be coming to harangue me for a piece of the pie. There is no pie, there is a small cupcake that is being split 6 ways, and I intend to be meticulous in making sure the crumbs have their proper distribution.
Again, I feel you on this. My brother is good with financial stuff, which is great cause mom had money in a half dozen places and now my financials have gotten more complicated that I really wanted them to be. The matter of her house and belongings are another thing. She was a saver. Luckily, the house is being sold to a family member, so that makes that easier. But the buyer already has her own stuff, so now we have to empty a house of 80 years of belongings. Lots of the furniture has been doled out to family, but it’s all the small stuff. I think Habitat for Humanity and Recycling for Families are going to have a good month.
Regarding the viewing, we’re not having one. Like you, I think visitations, AFAIC, are just downright creepy and morbid. Her last days (pancreatic cancer) were not kind and we don’t want anyone to remember her like that, no matter how good a job the mortician might do. Direct to cremation. We’re having a memorial service and celebration of life around her birthday next month.
Mom kept.a tidy house, so we’re not worried about that…but we don’t have a buyer, which means that in addition to lawyers, I’m probably going to have to deal with realtors soon.
Habitat for Humanity, huh? That may be a good way to clear out a lot of furniture and such. I’ll have to look into that.
Oh gods, that brings back memories of the time when Grandma had died.
Dealing with all the official stuff when you have to deal with having lost someone close to you was pretty hard for me. You have my sympathy.
Not helped in my case by my mother, uncle and aunt being pretty useless and my sister keeping away from everything. At least the financial stuff wasn’t a problem, as I had been taking care of stuff for my grandparents for some years at that point. Because of that auntie dearest accused me of having purloined money even before the funeral…
At least viewings aren’t a thing here in Germany. I prefer to remember her as a living person, not the cold body I found that morning.
It is. I would call it a morbid custom.
It is also getting to be obsolete.
Viewings aren’t often even held any more.
So are funerals for that matter.
These days they are “Celebrations of Life” or “Memorial services”. Which can be held in xian churches or any where.
The best “Celebrations of Life” I’ve been to were Pagan wakes. Basically a big party outside in the evening around a bonfire in the fall.
Retired lawyer here, did lots of probate. Parental deaths are inevitable, and emotional. You have my sympathy. Hopefully you dodge the issues that sometimes arise, like mom promised the same items to multiple people. Some found it useful to have a day for heirs to determine who gets what by giving everyone colored dots to stick on stuff they wanted – multiple dots on one item means bargaining ahead, but when you do it all at once it makes it easy to settle out – you and I both want A and B, so we each get one.
As to viewing a body, when my parents died, that short time with the body made it concrete, eliminating room for emotional denial of the death. Creepy for some, essential for others.
One of my distant relatives just died at 93.
We didn’t have a funeral or wake or Celebration of Life.
No one would have come.
She had outlived all of her friends and most of her family.
PZ could think about sending out Memorial cards to his mother’s contact lists.
This is pretty standard and they are easy to obtain.
They can be plain or fancy.
We do this in my extended family and they are always well received.
You shouldn’t have to.
Delegate and divide up the tasks.
I sorted through my grandparent’s photo albums and made up the Memorial cards and sent them out. It was something I could do to help out.
@PZ Specifically Habitat for Humanity ReStore. I was going to look up locations in Minnesota, but then I think you’re actually in Washington, right? They’re nationwide, so you should be able to find something in the area. Many of them will actually send a truck to pick up donations, and they take lots of stuff. Furniture, appliances, home goods. Unless you want to deal with a garage sale ;)
The nearest Habitat for Humanity store according to Google is…
Auburn is 6 miles from Kent.
There is also a Goodwill in Kent.
@6: Exactly. When my sister was killed in an accident, I asked for an open-casket funeral, because I needed to see her body. It was very hard to take in the fact that she was gone (she was only fifteen) and so it was a necessary part of processing what had happened.
Ah PZ you look just like her.
I’m looking at old photos now for a project. My family photographed everything and kept it all. But they used a Kodak Box Brownie for most of the time and now gaces are barely distinguishable, figures fade in to backgrounds. Frustrating.
Since my husband is retiring at the end of this year, we’re currently getting everything put in place the way that we want it to be. Neither of us wants one of the kids who remained in Texas to move us back there to have us “closer to them”.
We definitely do not want to be interred there.
We’ve been attending retirement information seminars for DOD employees and veterans.
A national cemetery has recently been established on the federal property of the old Ft. Ord, about six miles from where I’m sitting. It overlooks the beautiful Monterey Bay. As a veteran, my husband can be interred there with full military honors, at no cost. The cost for me will be about $800. We will make the cremation arrangements and prepay that.That way, our five fractious offspring won’t have to make any of the decisions except for planning any memorials that they wish to have.
We were handed a brochure from the JAG office and invited to make an appointment to update our wills (also gratis for retired military members). Our current ones still list our property that we sold in Texas. Our California home is worth much more, so we really need to get that update done.
I’ve become the keeper of the family history for both of our families. I have beautiful mementos that once belonged to his mother, as well as mine. We bought a large china cabinet from our local ReStore just to house all of the china and glassware from our families, since my china cabinet is filled with what I’ve collected. I also have stacks of photos, genealogies and some historic documents about both families. I love having all of these things, but the kids aren’t very interested in most of it.
I’m hoping that someone from the generation of our grandkids develops an interest in maintaining the family history.
Our oldest grandson is 25 and is getting quite serious about his college sweetheart. They seem to be echoing our romance in college. Perhaps they will become the family historians! He’s an art history major, so it would make sense.
I feel for you, PZ. Hopefully, it will all go smoothly.
That one with the puppy, ah jeez. I hope it was a good dog for her.
While she was in the hospital, one of the things she asked for was to go home to see her dog. Her dog died earlier this year.
I have found that simply putting stuff at the curb with a FREE sign is the easiest way to dispose of smaller items and miscellaneous household goods.
If that’s not practical, place unwanted stuff in the garage and post a free or for sale ad on Craigslist or FB marketplace.
Lovely photos. You definitely favor your Mom.
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People don’t look as they did in life after they’ve died, so these things are always shocking, distressing events. You definitely come away knowing your loved one is gone forever.
It sucks, I know, but it’s better to go through it all now, PZ. When my mother died four years ago this December, my sister (also the executrix of the estate) couldn’t bear to go through her things.
She still hasn’t. If I wasn’t here, the house would’ve sat empty for 4 years, with no maintenance being done.
It’s better to do it right off, when the grief is big enough… that what’s just that little bit more?
All my sympathy, PZ. It’s something we all have to face, but I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.
As someone who restores sports and family photos for a living, oh my. Photos from 1860-1950 are FAR superior to photos taken in the 1970s and 80s. I’m working on several hockey photos now for the Boston Sports Museum that were taken in 1970. They are a huge mess of film grain noise that I need to get rid of without losing sharpness. And I shudder to think of the family memories that have been lost thanks to Polaroids.
@chris whitehouse #18
You can thank those stupid smaller than postage-stamp-sized 110 Instamatic cameras of the 70’s and 80’s for that. Thanks Kodak.
When giving away or selling things from the 1950s maybe attach a note to each item stating where it is coming from, who it belonged to and approximate years. The context will increase the value down the road, even if we consider it to have no value.
A Donald Duck magazine of 1955 was worthless once you had read it, today it is $$$. A postcard from the date of the Apollo 11 mission. An LP record.
-As for your photos, try to reconstruct which events they depict while you still have relatives who remember, and write it down.
Chris Whitehouse @ 18
As softare and computers become exponentially more capable I expect it will get easier to reconstruct photos.
And if you have a grainy color photo taken from the same event as a sharp
b & w photo it may one day be trivial to colorize the latter correctly or have the bad photos cleaned up if you have better images of the faces you can feed into the system.
I have been looking at poor-quality TV recordings from long ago and considered how the next gen AIs might improve / reconstruct the images.
.
And we will come to regret throwing away so many photos the day AI can do the heavy lifting of identifying people in photos taken many decades ago.
The neighbour standing next to grandma in a photo taken before we were born will be unknown to us, but an AI reconstructing relationship networks and using population records and image processing will one day be able to do seemingly impossible things.
Myself, @ 20 –
Charles Stross wrote decades ago that the shrinking cost of digital data will make it unnecessary to purge old records.
-Take a digital photo of each item, add data of where it is coming from, who it belonged to and the time frame. The provenance can be preserved as long as there is digital media.