Hold The Trash

Even after four years, I still have not cleared all of my parents things out of my childhood home where I now live.  There are a lot of things.  And if it’s in a room in which I never enter, it bothers me none.

However, I finally decided to sort through the Christmas boxes in my basement.  I made two stacks – 1. I may use these to decorate this holiday season 2. these decorations would never be a part of my celebration.

Once I’d gone through about 20 boxes and bags, there was an old, brown paper bag sitting on the floor hiding in a corner of my basement.  When I first glanced in it, all I saw was an empty video reel about size of a 45 rpm record.  I was getting ready to toss it into my trash pile, but my fingers kept digging deeper inside.  Tucked under the empty reel were about 10 blue video reels the size of the bottom of soda can.  And the reels had labels.  One said “1979, Michelle’s Birthday”. Another was labeled “1980 trip to Georgia”.

Hidden in this trashed brown paper bag, were treasures that I could never re-create.  Inside this simple object were memories of my childhood.  In my hands I now held videos of my parents – two people that I will never physically be able to see again on this Earth.  I was on Cloud 9!!!!!  I immediately drove to the closest video store to see if they could transfer the reels to DVD.

I nervously waited for a week in hopes that the videos would contain some footage.  Our basement was flooded in the late 90′s and a lot of things were ruined.  Since those videos were found on the basement floor, I didn’t know if they had been damages as well.  As I picked the videos, I rushed home and down to my basement to see what had been discovered.  I saw footage of several of my birthday parties, a recording when my dad taped my second grade class performing plays, a family gathering with my cousins, aunts and uncle and my friends and I playing outside at Mallgate.

Only about 3 of the 9 videos actually had sound, but I had a smile on my face the entire time.  For the first time in 18 years (since my father passed away) I was able to watch my parents together in action.  What a blessing to run across that bag.  If you haven’t done so already – take plenty of pictures and videos of your family.  You may not feel you personally have a use for them, but I can guarantee you that once you have left this earth, the people left behind will cherish them!

(PS: If anyone is an old school techie that has an interest in a Sankyo Super 8 Sound-500, let me know)

M.Y. September 2010