Lost Captures

Over the last two years I have walked past piles of jumbled envelopes containing hundreds of photographs accumulated over the years.

Birthdays, holidays, Christmases  , functions, stupidity , clouds , nature , fish , horses. You name it .There was a photo.

This would be reflected in homes across the country. Across the world. Now the pics are captured on phones .A bit different but still images of our everyday lives saved for the future.

The pain of peeking in to the glued colours and stuck memories has been too much to confront.

There had to be a day so I bravely picked up a bundle of  dry silty packages and tentatively started to investigate.

Time has helped face the result.

One at a time I tried to open the stacked stuck photos hoping to find something separate , intact. To no avail. 

I could see parts of the family , birthday cakes of molten colours like melted icing and fudged groups of once smiling cheeky kids that are now merged in to a palette of mess.

Some of my favourite pics were impossible to emerge from the history and so my mood plunged.

I found one precious photo of my daughter and I when she was around 3.It was in a frame and the glass had protected the bulk of the picture from being smudged forever by the silt and water .

I took it to a guy who has restored it so that at least one memory is back.

Unfortunately the negatives that were in the envelopes are also fused together and cannot be restored.

I am thankful that I had moved old movies to a usb and CD and had stored them up stairs.

I continue to carefully search through the remaining stack and may be will find other precious memories that can be returned to the box of history.