Catching Memories (with apologies to Catching Lives, Sheila’s charity) – by Jean

It is strange how the thought processes of old friends – even ones who don’t meet often – sometimes converge.  After reading another of Sheila’s blogs, I was thinking how lucky Sheila’s grandchildren would be to have all the postings about her life and family Sheila has been doing recently.  I am sure that one of Sheila’s brilliant, tech savvy daughters will capture all the postings in a less ephemeral media than Facebook.  And of course Oscar at thirteen will be sharing one of Sheila’s bigger adventures to date.

Oscar with his quiff
Oscar with his quiff

The vision of Oscar as an elderly gentleman in 2083 arose before my eyes, still with his cool quiff (they’ll have invented something to prevent male baldness by then) and maybe a bit greyer. In it, he was surrounded by a group of his grandchildren, and perhaps those of his Australian cousins, and they are all clamouring to hear about the time he climbed Mount Kilimanjaro with their delightfully dotty great-great-grandma Sheila.  In fact the same Sheila had become one of their favourite subjects for ‘granddad’s stories’.  Oscar’s work will be easy – he will read them pages from Sheila’s blog.  Maybe he will need to do a bit more of an explanation about how life was in those days.  These children will indeed be lucky to have this thread of family stories now that families are becoming increasingly fragmented and family albums of photographic memories reside on technology that becomes dated.

Page from one of Sheila's family's old albums
Page from one of Sheila’s family’s old albums

The more I thought about it, the more enthusiastic I became for Sheila to expand her memories backwards and sideways.  And that was where I was when I read Sheila’s blog (17 June) about needing to find a new project when the Kilimanjaro Climb is over.  Sheila mentioned in an early posting that I had put together a family tree for her father’s side; it is relatively easy to do that in Scotland because it is a small country and the records were centralised at an early stage. (Elsewhere, more and more data is becoming available on-line.) Sadly I wasn’t able to do anything about her German mother’s side, but I know that Sheila and Leslie are in touch with distant cousins from that side, so there is scope for that.  Also, I only went backwards in time, with a little bit about siblings of the older generation, some of whom Sheila knew about.  The tree has nothing about the family members younger than Sheila or her father, or about Stewart’s family. So there is plenty of scope for expansion of that skeleton, after which Sheila could flesh it out adding any anecdotes she can dig up.  I am certain it would all make interesting reading now – and when Oscar is entertaining his grandchildren!

Family Tree Chart
Family Tree Chart

And maybe, as a keen family historian I can make a plea to anyone else who reads this.  What memories have you stored away for the generations that follow you?  Will your grandchildren and beyond find anything to tell them what you were like, what you did, what you cared about?  We all lead such busy lives, with so much on Facebook and other media that might not survive – unlike all the old family albums.  So maybe you should start writing about your memories and encourage the older generations to write down anything that they would want their descendants to know about them.  Megan Russell (14 June, the Butterfly effect) wrote a lovely post about the little acts of good or change that people might make because of Sheila, Jae and Oscar’s adventure.  Wouldn’t it be a splendid legacy if we all left that little bit more of us for future generations?

Old family albums
Old family albums

One thought on “Catching Memories (with apologies to Catching Lives, Sheila’s charity) – by Jean”

  1. Thanks for the timely reminder, Jean. Most of our photographs are either in complete disorder or else exist only on a computer. I also have masses of information which I unearthed on the internet about previous generations but it’s all higgledy piggledy in box files and would mean very little to anyone else. My 77-year-old brother is writing his memoirs for his family and I think I need to make this a project for next autumn and winter.
    I’ve enjoyed all of your contributions but the story about the French
    loaves up the sleeves of your coats as you left Sheila’s parents’ house is my favourite.

    I’ve enjoyed your contributions,
    Pat

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