Why I Journal/Blog/Scrapbook, etc….

For Christmas, my mom gave me a copy of a history of my Great-Grandma, Isadora Chadburn Price.  It is a compilation of her autobiography, interviewed questions, diaries compilation, photos, and poems and such.  I remember a lot of my Great-Grandma, but this is amazing to me.

I imagine that when my she sat down to write her autobiography, she didn’t  feel like she had much to document.  I feel that way at times.  But she lived a life I know so little about.  She writes about moving into house with my Great-Grandpa as a newly married couple and comments that their rent was $8 a month for half of a duplex that only had two rooms that had a roof over them.  There was no running water and no toilets.  Crazy. 

I’m only a few pages into her autobiography and I’m learning so much about my Great-Grandma.  For example, she wrote poems!  I had no idea!  She was a painter.  I have a painting of hers hanging in my house that she gave Justin and me when we married.  But, poetry?  I didn’t know and apparently, neither did her son, my Grandpa.  How crazy is that?  I’m so thankful that she kept records…so thankful that she felt the urge to document her life…so thankful that I have this information about her now that she has passed. 

I’ve come to realize in the last few years just how fragile life is and how quickly it goes.  I enjoy going back and looking at photos and videos even from just a few years ago.  It brings back memories I had forgotten.  My kids love looking at them because they don’t remember a lot of that stuff at all.  Tyson (who is currently 8) told me he wanted to go to Hawaii.  I told him that he has been twice, but he was too young to remember.  It was fun to go and show him things he did and places he went.

I keep memories for him:

I keep memories for her:

And I keep memories for him:

I also keep memories and document my life for a time when I’m no longer here.  To have left my “mark” here for my kids…for future descendants.  I also keep memories because it’s fun!