“I’ve travelled the seas in half the time that it took to live a life.”
Today was about memories. Lots of them. My Grandparents are downsizing their home and moving into a retirement flat in the next few weeks, therefore they decided to give my sister and I our memory boxes, something which they had lovingly put together pretty much since we were born.
When you’re almost twenty five years old, that’s a fairly big box! It had in it all sorts of bits and pieces, letters, postcards, trinkets, photographs and other various things that sparked lots of fond memories of summers on the Isle of Wight. My Grandparents memoirs were also there, my Grandfathers in particular as a police detective.
In November 2001, The Isle of Wight County Press ran an article focusing on the”9/11 refugees” that my Grandparents had become just a few months previously. The newspaper article, which I’d never seen, was included in the memory box.
Flight DL11 was the very next flight due in to New York after the two planes had hit the World Trade Center. Instead of going into New York, for security reasons the plane was diverted to Canada. My grandparents were on board. They were evacuated with only their hand luggage, to an Ice Rink and later adopted by some local people so that my Grandfather didn’t have to sleep on the floor (recently having had a knee replacement.
There were rocks and fossils, bits of shiny smooth glass that I had collected from the beaches on the Isle of Wight when I was younger, photographs of my parents wedding day and lots of photographs of events the following years. Letters from my class at school thanking my Grandfather for coming in and talking about his experiences in the second world war (there will be some facebook tags later with those!)
If you haven’t already started, keep your memories safe. The little bits of paper, trinkets and photographs that were created or taken in the moment may not seem important at the time, but can mean the world to a person later on. The poem below pretty much sums up what will happen, if we don’t keep the memories safe.
Strangers in the Box
Author: Pamela A. Harazim
Come, look with me inside this drawer,
In this box I’ve often seen,
At the pictures black and white,
Faces proud, still, serene.
I wish I knew the people,
These strangers in the box,
Their names and all their memories,
Are lost among my socks.
I wonder what their lives were like,
How did they spend their days?
What about their special times?
I’ll never know their ways.
If only someone had taken time
To tell who, what, where, when,
These faces of my heritage,
Would come to life again.
Could this become the fate
Of the pictures we take today?
The faces and the memories
Someday to be passed away?
Make time to save your stories,
Seize the opportunity when it knocks,
Or someday you and yours could be
The strangers in the box.
Kathryn Dawson Photography 