a digital family heirloom?

When my children grow up, what type of family heirlooms will they receive from me? I have an old rocking chair that was passed down from my grandmother, and I have some old family photos, but when it comes to the photos that we have taken, many of them only exist in digital form.

At first, once we started using our digital camera in lieu of our 35mm, we would wait a month or two to get prints. That span eventually became six months, and then a year. Then we tried printing them ourselves, which we found to be costly and lacking in consistency. So we quit printing them altogether. It was too easy to just keep the photos on the PC, digital frame, or a disc that we can insert into our DVD player and view as a family. When I have time, I sit down and put together a slideshow, syncing the photos to music. Is this what I am supposed to hand over to our children when they have families of their own? One of the options that I have been considering are the print-on-demand services that allow you to upload photos which they will print into a nice hard-bound book for you. It's a little pricey, though.

I understand how much easier it is to just make copies of digital media for everyone, but it just doesn't seem very personal to me.

freeze it contest!

I normally don't get sucked into these types of things, but in this case it would benefit my grandmother so I'm relaxing my guard a bit. The makers of Freeze It Gel are sponsoring a contest in which one blogger can win a year's supply of their muscle relief gel. We're supposed to tell the story of someone who can use the muscle and joint pain relief that their product offers. In my case, I may have an occasional sore muscle from my infrequent outdoor adventures, but I'll survive. My grandmother, on the other hand, suffers greatly from severe arthritis in her wrists and knuckles and I would love to give her the gift of happy hands.


My grandmother has been through so much tragedy already that she truly deserves to have a more comfortable and healthy time at this point in her life. When she was young, she was engaged to a young military pilot. They were in love and the future looked promising. Unfortunately, he died in an plane crash before they were wed. Her eyes still water when she speaks of him today, which isn't very often. But she does still have his military "wings" pin.

Fortunately, she met my grandfather several years later and the two of them fell in love, married and had four children. Many years later, when she was enjoying her initial years as a grandmother, she discovered a lump in her breast. She was diagnosed with breast cancer, and had to have a mastectomy. All of the cancer was removed and she lived for another twenty years with excellent health. Then she began to have heart problems and her cardiologist stated that she would have to have surgery. Although the surgery was unavoidable, we were all extremely concerned at the idea of an eighty year old woman surviving open heart surgery. She was sore and weak for a long time after the surgery, but eventually regained her mobility and strength.

Then in 2004, my grandfather started having trouble breathing. He was coughing all of the time, and he eventually was placed on an oxygen tank. Although he had quit smoking thirty years before, the twenty plus years of smoking prior to that had already taken its toll on his lungs. His condition worsened almost overnight. In a matter of several weeks he had lost thirty percent of his body weight and was placed in hospice. We were there at the very end and it was a horrible sight. It is horrible to see a person die from smoking - my grandfather couldn't breathe, he couldn't speak, he was severely dosed with morphine. He was in so much pain. It was as if he was drowning but he wasn't underwater. It was horrible to see my grandmother have to experience that after all she had already been through.

My grandmother is tired. She wishes that she could be with my grandfather in heaven. Early stages of Alzheimer's seem to be setting in. Her short term memory isn't so great, and she suffers from severe arthritis in her knuckles and wrists. Like so many people her age, she takes a candy bowl's worth of pills each day, but requires the assistance of my mother to make sure that she is taking them when she needs to. In fact, she depends on my mother for much of her mobility, as she was in two car accidents since my grandfather passed away and can no longer drive (my grandfather always did the driving).

It pains me to see her suffering so badly from arthritis and joint pain. She doesn't deserve this. She has been through so much pain already, and although she has become a bit weary with old age, she is still the sweetest person I have ever known. She's one of the few people in my life who ever understood the true meaning of unconditional love, and always has a fresh supply. She's also one of the strongest individuals I have ever met, having experienced the loss of one fiance and one husband, and having survived breast cancer and open heart surgery. She is one of two sisters left from a family of eleven children. She is truly amazing. I often wonder how my disposition would have changed had I suffered like she has. I'd rather not think about it though, as I already have a somewhat negative assessment of life and I'm only in my thirties.

Perhaps I'll change my own disposition a bit if this little essay wins her a year's supply of Freeze It pain relief gel and it provides her with some comfort in these golden years.

xmas family fun

For some people, the holidays are full of all of the things we hear in holiday songs, like good will, cheer, happiness, etc. For others, the holidays can sometimes be more headache than they're worth.

Unfortunately, our sentiments towards this time of the year tend to fall towards the latter experience. In all honestly, it's not because we are grumpy, moody, or have a negative attitude towards the holidays. In fact, we love doing things for our children and seeing them experience the holidays. I just wish that our relatives felt the same way about us, and had the same intentions that we have.

Instead, we have relatives who feel that Christmas is all about spending money, and others that take it a step further and compare how much you spend on one another. Then we have other relatives who feel that everything should revolve around them, and to hell with anyone else's feelings. So, for the first time, we decided to try the holidays on our own this year, spending the time with our own children, and not concern ourselves with the travel and stress.

I have to admit that finance also played a part in our decision, as traveling during the holidays is never cheap. But for the most part, this is a decision that was made so that I don't have to see my wife crying on Christmas Eve because her divorced parents can't just get along for one night of the year.

So, I thought we were safe. Aside from a few uncomfortable telephone conversations in which we had to explain why we weren't going "home" for the holidays, our interactions with relatives have been more or less pleasant. Until today! Today, my wife received a phonecall from a relative complaining about one of the gifts we had sent her. This was a personal gift, a homemade DVD with photo slideshows of our kids. Her complaint? That there weren't any photos with my her in them. She then went off on a tangent, explaining that this was an attempt at making the kids forget their grandmother, or that we intentionally didn't take enough photos of her when she last visited. Good grief! It wasn't something that I even thought of while putting the DVD together.

This was a DVD of our kids, and that should have been enough. I guarantee you that we won't hear any complaints from any other family members, even though most of them also don't appear in the slideshows. But they understand that the earth doesn't revolve around them. You don't get too many photos of relatives when you live 1,000 miles away from them, and that was the whole point of sending this DVD - so that they could see photos of our kids. Without going into too much detail, let me just say that as much as this complaint seemed to come from left-field, it doesn't surprise me to hear who it was coming from.

Chalk up another reason for not going "home" for the holidays...
Sorry for the personal rant - had to get this off of my chest.