Another year has come and gone. Where does the time go? I'm getting closer to "retirement", but am keeping busy with Meals on Wheels and my genealogy when I'm not at work. This is actually the majority of my time at present, since I'm currently oncall while the business is so slow. At least I'm able to collect unemployment for the time being.
Yesterday I read a blogpost on the Genealogy With Valerie blog. It was titled "I Thought I'd Have More Time!" She talked about all the time we spend on digging back into our family history, thinking we'll have time "later" to write down our own stories and the stories of our loved ones. That doesn't always happen. Her husband developed a rare form of dementia about five years ago. He's only 51 today. All those stories he told her about his early life--so many times she thought she'd never forget them--are fading fast, and she's now having to reconstruct the stories with the help of her husband's family. Those memories are all buried somewhere in his mind that he--and she by extension--can no longer reach.
This has been a real wakeup call for me. Over the years since Dad's death, I have recorded some of Mom's stories in one of those memory question books that you can buy. I think we're up to October questions. I need to do more in the coming year, because you never know how much time you really have. I certainly can't ask Dad anymore--he died in 1998. Sometimes it seems like forever, sometimes it could have been yesterday, except that I see my eighteen year old niece Brianna sitting across the room from me. She was two when her Grandpa went to heaven.
Maybe it's time to get her recording her life story.
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