Strange Complaints

Yesterday I found myself thinking of my friend, Bill Shrum. Since he’s passed I find myself doing that more and more often but this time I was thinking about all of his photographs.

Bill prided himself on basically being one of the historians of his family. Tucked away in a dresser in his back room, at least that’s where I last remember him showing them to me, were albums and albums, full of photographs.

Not only just of him but of his brother and his parents, and also their parents and extended relatives as well.

I’m sure most of us of a certain age have those kinds of photographs somewhere in our possession.

In our house, we have all of the photographs my mother had collected in her lifetime as well as those of my mother-in-law. Sadly, my wife and I don’t know over half the people in those photographs by name.

They are our family though.

Which got me to thinking of Bill because he was not only part of his own family but mine as well and a great many people in town and in Arkansas county as well.

I wonder what will happen to his photographs.

Younger generations, don’t have the need to have this physical collection of photographs. Many of them have the equivalent of that collect collection on their digital devices.

Their dresser full of photographs is in the cloud somewhere.

But even then, what happens to those photographs when they pass away? Should someone else in their family want to continue on the tradition of a family historian, such as Bill... How will they gather those photographs?

Then again, what if nobody wants them? Will they just get deleted?

If nobody wants Bill’s photographs, or mine and my wife’s, will they just be thrown away and forgotten?

Will we be forgotten?