My Whole Life Flashed Before My Eyes

It’s a good thing I have a film scanner and these newly developed film photos of my little ones (see below) to soothe my aching heart because I’ve been having a little crisis.

Actually it is a huge crisis to me:  everything on my external hard drive got erased accidentally by a beloved (and yes, forgiven) family member whose name will not be mentioned, you know, like Voldemort.  Anyway, my life flashed before my eyes.  Literally, I saw all of the family photos of my children from the last 8 years, everything digital, all the videos of them in marching band or school plays, the photos of vacations I’d always dreamed of going on and finally did, that 365 project where I got used to looking at myself, and, worst of all, most of my interviews with my grandparents before my grandfather’s memory began to fade.

I think it says a lot about my character that my reaction upon learning what had happened was to simply mumble, “No… no…” and pace instead of screaming, “Oh, YOU!” while ripping out chunks of hair, spinning in circles, and biting my way through large pieces of furniture.

I really do mean that my life flashed before my eyes.  All those sweet lazy days at home where my children made up tv shows for the camcorder…  Those children are now 16 and 12, I need these memories.

I think most of the files were retrieved by a local company.  They are, however, unnamed and all out of order.  I don’t know how to run the video and retrieve the sound or how to open the documents.  But, maybe I’ll figure it out.   As I click through videos of my son at age 8 imitating me teaching yoga in his pajamas or my daughter purposely singing through her nose for long periods of time, I can’t help but wonder what the computer tech guys happened to see in all of this.  They probably would think I’m really, really vain.  Remember, a while back I did a 365 project in which I took 365 photos of myself along with numerous possible alternates that I was too busy to sift through and delete while in the middle of the all- consuming Project.  In other words, there is way too much of me on there.  I guess this is my chance to sift and start backing up my back up.

Okay, so that’s enough italics and bold type.  I’m going to calm down and sit on my patio tonight and knit.  One thing that has come from this is that I’ve been reflecting on how blessed I am to have this family, to have had these conversations with my grandparents, and these experiences together- even if they aren’t all recovered.

Next week I’ll probably be starting a new photo project for the year called “The Organizing, Renaming, and Correctly Accessing Every Image and/or Document You’ve Saved for the Last 8 years Project.”  Something tells me there’s no Flickr group for this one.