Last week was the most difficult in my life with the sad passing of my mother.
As I have dealt with the things that need to be arranged I found myself needing an image of my mum that I knew we had from her wedding day from 1949.
I finally found the image I was seeking in a small and very old brown case which also contained a treasure chest of images dating back to 1917.
I decided while I had time I’d copy the aging prints most of which where in amazing condition despite their age. The images ranged from the usual family snaps of Mum,Dad,Grandad,Grandma and various other siblings to some more unusual from my dads naval days.
My Dad served on the aircraft carrier HMS Indomitable during WW2 in the Mediterranean and the Pacific and spent time on R&R in Sydney.
One in particular shown here is my Dad in his uniform with a blonde lady which we believe was a girl he met and got engaged to while in Sydney.
He returned to England with intentions of returning to marry her but then met my mum.
On top of this we also discovered letters he wrote home to his mother and newspaper clippings of him which really adds to the whole story of that time in his life.
This got me thinking firstly how lucky we (myself, brother & sister) are to have this family archive of images and letters. Secondly just how important image captions are as only a few of the prints had any kind of dates or descriptions scribbled on the rear of them.
It’s a shame that the majority of children growing up will never have a dusty box or case full of prints in Grandma & Grandads loft to open up and explore as most people these days simply do not produce prints but share their images just digitally.
Maybe we all should have a box and place prints into it periodically for our children & grandchildren to enjoy when we are no longer around .
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