Hi, I felt we had a T-Day experience yesterday that fits the bill well. My mom’s house is like a waystation for the Holidays, with us and then cousins and other relatives coming and going and telephoning. Well inthe evening, before I was getting ready to leave, I remembered that I’d had it in my mind this past week to ask my mom where she’d ended up storing the “Memories” videocassette that I had made up 12 years ago, for her and my late dad’s golden wedding anniversary, culled from a bunch of old Kodak home movie tapes that I’d discovered in one of their kitchen drawers in 1997.
I recall we’d all watched it for that occasion, and frankly I’d forgotten what was on most of it. So I’d hoped that there would be glimpses on it especially of my dad who passed in 2005, if even to see him “alive” again.
Well, funny thing is my mother responded by saying she didn’t remember where it exactly was — but she instinctively went into a room separate from where she keeps all her existing videos, and she found the faux-brown-leatherbound “Memories” cassette next to some folders next to my dad’s favorite living room chair, strangely. I said, “Let’s see if it works!” She almost never uses her VCR anymore, for fear that she can’t remember how to use it right or if a tape becomes stuck.
I’d never used hers before, but I figured out how to get the damned thing on (Mr. Technical that I’m NOT!), and it started playing! It’s only 9 minutes long — but what memories!! Two-thirds of it are movie images of my brother’s Communion Sunday — it must’ve been 1958 or ’59 — and he and all the other little guys in their formal white suits and the little girls in their 1950′s “Sally, Dick & Jane” dresses. And we see my brother posing, my mom and an aunt coming out of the church, and then mom and my brother being filmed visiting all our relatives on both sides of the family that Sunday morning!! I’d forgotten this part of the reels! To see moving images come to life of old stationary photographs I’ve seen over and over again for years.
My mom was always stylish, and there she is through the whole scenes in her very Lucy Ricardo form-fitting late 1950′s gray suit jacket and skirt, high heels, and wide-rimmed, flowers-covered flat Sunday church hat. And then we got to see all our late grandparents and relatives, many of whom are now gone but who we were ironically all thinking and talking about during dinner yesterday!
The last part of the 9-minute movie is my own 1st home birthday party, September 1963 — and me hugging my favorite large stuffed dog that I remember vividly loving, and my beloved (pre-Leggos) Bricks canister set passed down from my brother to eventually me in the ’60s — and my cousins rubbing my head and all my aunts in their young, 1960s beehive-hairdos splendor!
My mom kept exclaiming, taken aback happily at seeing her parents alive again — and me, too, because they’re the only images I have, albeit of him when I wasn’t even born yet, of my late sibling gone 25 years. Unfortunately, we both sighed at not seeing a sighting of my dad: turned out, he was the one filming all the scenes. So that made me turn to my mom
in the den and say, “Mom, just like we have so many good things to remember him by in our house, accomplishments and daily lives, it’s because of dad that we now also have these lasting filmed images — because he filmed it all!”
Mom said I made her day, and I made mine, too. It was a way to remember our past-prime-of-health or departed loved ones in a way involving not grief, but rather viewing, reliving, and feeling the emotional comforting warmth of past happy memories and events.
I hope everybody else got to have some similar T-Day moment in your holiday yesterday, too. Have a great weekend! Gary 
wow!! what a beautiful post that was. That is what Thanksgiving is all about…family amd reminiscing the good things in life. On that special holiday I myself learned to keep all the stress and negativity that we sometimes feel at the door and instead embrace with lots of love and laughter. While pictures are wonderful to look through home videos are even more special as you really get to see the actions of people. Try to preserve them om cds or a disk if you ever get the chance. I need to do that as well. I would hate for a tape to break one day…..I need to keep just in case copies. Gary, we all love reading your posts…I am so glad you had such a wonderful holiday.
I’m soooo glad it was such a special day for all of you. I hope this weekend gives back to you, that you enjoy good health and R&R.
What a special time that must have been for you and your Mom and your other relatives viewing all those past wonderful memories!
Gary,
I was inspired by your post. Over the Winter, I want to make it a family project to gather up every last picture and video and get those identified and transferred to digital media for preservation and presentation. Although we’ve not viewed most of the videos or looked at pictures in a while, I do remember that feeling you get when you do – as if being transported back to that time.
Further, we really should get moving on identifying people in pictures while mom can still help; after she’s gone that information will be lost forever.
Thanks for sharing. I hope this holiday has been everything you needed it to be, it certainly sounds that way.
Blessings,
-Derek
What a blessed Thanksgiving for you and an enjoyable post for us. I’ve never done the video thing and I’m not great at photos but I have three wonderfully gifted daughters who keep me well supplied with photos. So I had fun this week making photo albums online for a couple of special people for Christmas gifts (shhh – don’t tell
)and thoroughly enjoyed sweet memories myself. Whether still or moving, they are definitely a gift to us. Thank you for another sweet gift with this. 
.-= Kaye Swain´s last blog ..Craft Foam Gingerbread Houses and Christmas Tree Ornaments are Great for Grandkids =-.