[markbnj]

Like the author I've been in the process of archiving family memories since my parents passed away. In my Dad's case his early fascination with super 8mm film gave way to a lifelong quest to own more Kodak slide carousels than any other human. It's sort of an odd place to be, when you're in possession of so much that _seems_ emotionally, viscerally important, but that ordinary people living their everyday lives take very little actual interest in. I scanned all the slides with a Kodak thing I bought on Marketplace. There were more than 6500 of them and the archive has passed 20GB in size. Now I have a stack of plastic kodak carousels taller than I am and thousands of slides that I can't just put in the trash because it feels wrong.

I'm working on loose documents and photos now with a great Epson flatbed scanner that I've had for years. It's something of an obsession for me now: to finish the job and tie their lives and a good chunk of ours off neatly. When I'm done I'll pack it all onto thumb drives and send copies to my siblings and they will look at a few of them and then put the drives in a drawer and that will likely be the end of it. But I will have done my duty to the old folks, even though it took long enough that I became one. It has all reminded me of how I mourned when I lost a hard drive years ago, and then came to the realization that I hadn't looked at any of its contents in years and that if I lived to be 100 probably none of it would ever have been important again anyway. You can't really keep anything, so do your kids a favor and dispose of your stuff while you can :).