Work on the photo albums continues. I’m just about done with 1989, which brings me closer to the end of this phase of the project. My dad remarried in late 1991 after my mother died (she died in August 1990), and so I’m not going to do condensing for albums with my dad and Rae (as Rae is still alive). Instead, I’ll see about getting the later albums to Rae. Still, there are a few good things coming up in the albums to do, including my 30th birthday party. In terms of compression ratio, I’m on album 98 or 99, and I’ve completed 18 condensed albums (plus there will be one for undated portraits and stuff).
All in all, it has been an interesting process: In doing this, I’ve seen my parents marriage through the eyes of an adult, not the child I was at the time. I’ve seen it from its starting days through to its end. I know the remaining albums have the hard part: my mother’s cancer, and her descent and spiral as a result. But its a life — it can’t be changed, it can only be observed and remembered.
After I finish this phase comes the next one: going through all the pictures I took out of my photo albums for Erin’s Bat Mitzvah photo-DVD back in 2007… and filing them back into the right albums. That will be a different type of chore.
There is one side benefit to this: the guest room is starting to look inhabitable again.
