Photographs and Memories

It's funny to think about some of life's little coincidences. Sunday, October 28th, I had texted William about wanting to buy a film camera. We had previously discussed how my generation will be unable to leave their children and grandchildren physical photographs and albums unless they printed out digital photos. This bothered me, and I decided that I would not be one of them.

Some of my most fondest memories consist of looking through my family's photo albums at my grandparents'. I become so attached to those albums that I could tell you what photos were in each book without even opening them to glance at the pages. When my grandfather's nieces, nephews and sister gathered at his house every few summers for a reunion, we'd pull out these albums (which used to be stored in the attic) and thumb through those glossy plastic pages.

My grandfather taught me to be proud of my family history, and to always remember where I came from. Looking at my family's past in each and every picture, I learned what this pride felt like.

My grandparents' house was built by my grandfather, his brothers, and his father. That house has been in our family for as long as it has existed. We were all devastated to learn that on Monday, when Sandy hit, five feet of flood water entered the first floor where so much of my family's history and grandparents' belongings and appliances were placed. The house that we jokingly called a fortress because it was made of concrete walls instead of wood and dry wall had been compromised.

On Tuesday, when I was finally able to get to their house (they live across town, but down by the water and the streets were so flooded that police and the National Guard wouldn't let non-residents enter the area), I immediately went down to the basement. The water was over 3 1/2 feet then, and I was told it was 5 feet at its highest. The water marks on the walls proved this. I couldn't wade in the water to get to the photo albums because we all knew what was in it. The only thing I could salvage was a picture frame that was floating on the opposite side of the steps. With a broom, I fished it out of the water. My grandfather proudly hung those photos of his brothers in the Second World War on his basement wall, along with their medals.

On Thursday, my grandfather and our good family friend who was staying with them (he actually lost the majority of belongings in his ground-story home just six houses south of my grandparents' house) opened the sewer cap and a good amount of water drained out. With no electricity to pump out the water, about six inches remained in the basement until my uncle came up from Maryland with a generator. I was finally able to walk to the cabinet where the photo albums were. That cabinet, handcrafted by a German man that my grandfather knew years ago, was completely submerged save for the top of it where the stereo sat. All of the photo albums were completely submerged just days before. As I went through them to put in a garbage bag to dry out, water rushed out of each and every one of them. I wanted to cry, but I was so upset that I couldn't.

For the past two weeks, I've gone into our computer room to try and dry out these photos. With limited space to lay them out on, two and a half weeks later, much of them have began to smell and mold. I'm desperately trying to scan them to try and salvage some of them, but it doesn't replace the physical original photos. The small black album that contained my grandfather's personal pictures of the time he served in the Navy in the Pacific are beyond destroyed. His passport has become illegible. I can't even find the telegram his mother received when he landed in California, just a coast away from arriving home after the war ended. As I try to peel back those glossy plastic sheets, the photos rip apart or the ink just rubs off.

These are things you just simply can't replace. We can rebuild homes, buy a new washer and dryer, and restore the basement, but we can't retake these memories of my family's history in America, the earliest of which dates back to the 1920s.

My grandfather and grandmother (89 and 80 years old, respectively) are taking this all well. They realize that they haven't lost much in comparison to other members of our community. They understand that most of the items lost can be replaced, but I see the pain in my grandfather's eyes when I told him I just can't salvage some of the photos.

I regret never storing these photo albums back in the attic. I feel guilty over the fact that I couldn't dry some of them out sooner. It pains me each time I see mold growing on more and more of the photos that I thought were saved, and I worry what they might look like in sixth months.

I want to preserve the memories that I've made for future generations of mine. I want them to understand the value that lies in family photographs. I want them to have physical copies of these photos, and not some disc or whatever we may be storing data and photos on years from now. I want them to understand how devastated they might be if these memories were lost.