small memory project

Paul&Me

We are seeing a lot of TV commercials about travel, and Paul said "We've been a lot of places. Help me remember where we've been." There was a recent comment about going to a certain wildlife place together, but I'd not been there.

I started a list. We've been married 22 years, not our first marriages. I listed all I could remember about where the two of us have been, with or without kids. I added anything I knew of from his life prior to my arrival. I read the list to him and he smiled, saying "That's what I wanted. I want the kids to know about my memories."

Ed1937

Beautiful!

jfkoc

lovely....was there conversation about the places also?

amicrazytoo

What a beautiful memory for you to share.

June45

Wow...so sweet!!

Paul&Me

Yes, there was conversation with each memory. We had season passes to a local theme park for a couple of years, we took the kids to a Halloween event at the local zoo, more things like that. We also reminisce about the vehicles we used to own, ending with "I wish I had kept the Bronco."

French

 Two years ago, I offered  him a world map on which we scratched all the countries he went to... I think we won't scratch any more. 

When I have time, I go back to my photo stock and make an album of one of our trips and print it out. Now he has 4 of them and I will continue. With older holidays.

All these good memories are important. With these albums, he can tell, review them with the children...

ElaineD

Alas, when we 'downsized' for our independent living apartment, my 30 photo albums went into storage at my son's house.

That means, however, that I 'could' make memory collections of trips, for example, if I wanted to.  I'm glad he kept them, and the 50! VHS tapes I never got around to transferring DVD.

And now the transfer services transfer the tapes to memory sticks, not DVDs, I guess.

We've been married 59 years this July, and the number of trips is endless....beginning in 1963 and the summer we lived in Mexico with a family and took classes at the local university.

Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures then.  But soon after I started. I took pictures (and also videos) up until about 2000 when I just got tired of recording everything.  So anything after that is something our kids took.

Well, I did take some pictures in Germany, but not in Italy or Ireland, or the trip to China (our second) in 2007.  But mostly no more pictures.....

My DH already doesn't remember most of these trips, and yet he's very early in his dementia (no official diagnosis).

The one thing that is really positive, at least right now, is that he's so much nicer and calmer and less volatile than he's been for all of our marriage.  It's a real relief, to say the least.

Perhaps the 'calm before the storm'.  Most likely, in  fact.

But the 'memory books' must be amazing, Paul&Me.

Elaine