Family

These ladies are my grandmother, great grandmother, and great aunt in a photo taken in 1915 for their son and brother to take with him to war in one of the few surviving family photos I have of them.

They're here because last night I was watching a promo for the SBS program of 'Who Do You Think You Are'. The next person to be featured is actor Marta Dusseldorp and she was saying how important family is to her. It is to me as well and with all the memorabilia I've been finding in the decluttering process and a reunion for one side of my family coming up later in the year it's something I've been thinking about a lot.

It has always seemed sad to me that once a person passes away their life experiences also fade. I know I'm not the only one who regrets the fact that there was so much more to know about people who have been important in my life or my family's history and wishes they'd asked more questions when they had the chance. It's one of the reasons why I am making the effort to sort and scan what photos I have because these folk deserve to be remembered. I'm not sure who it will all pass on to when I'm gone but perhaps someone in the current generations will take up the task.

Not everyone feels this way, though. We have a dearth of family photos from my maternal grandmother's side of the family largely due to the fact that my grandmother and her sister were ladies who always preferred what was new and modern and on one memorable day they made a bonfire on my parents' back lawn and proceeded to burn any photos where they thought the clothes were old fashioned. My mother came home in time to save a few precious relics but the bulk of the family photos had gone up in smoke by then.

This loss was compounded when my other great aunt died and a distant family member took it upon herself without any consultation to throw out all her photos and other memorabilia. There was a lot since Aunty had kept a detailed record of everything she could find relating to family, all filed in at least a dozen albums of photos and newspaper cuttings. Since the family was well known in the town where they lived and had often figured in the local press it would have been a treasure trove of information.

All this means there's a huge gap in that part of our visual family history although we do have a number of photographic portraits from the paternal side of the family - photos on the walls were a big part of home decoration back in Victorian and Edwardian times. Some of the oldest of these are now deteriorating badly and I'm trying to find ways to preserve them for future generations, hoping that someone else will take up the torch after me. It would be a shame for all this history to be forgotten.