Last Sunday we shared our ride home from Georgia with boxes of pictures, memories of the past, and ghosts.  Lots of ghosts.  Because we’re cool like that.

PS- you know you want to be us, right?  Well, you’re in luck, classes start next week.  Yes, the tuition is a bit high but we do take Mastercard, Visa, and most student loans work for payment too.  We do accept cash, just make the check out to Childrens And Sailors Home, you can abbreviate that to CASH, spends just the same.  Remember, education is the key to the future, invest wisely.

But where were we before the commercial?  Oh, right, the boxes of Ghosts.  That I want to return to their rightful homes.  You see, it’s a long and tortured family history, filled with lots of drama, name calling, and ridiculousness.  Just like all family histories I think.  We’re no different.  We’re just like all of you.  The upshot of all that drama though was that when my Grandparents passed everything they had left went to my Mom.  Yep.  Everything.  Some things got distributed.  I think.  But there’s still lots of my Grandparents stuff in my Mom and Stepdad’s house.  Probably stuff I don’t even know about yet.  Stuff I’ve not even seen.  Since, you know, Mom’s only been dead a little over a month and we’ve not even begun the real work of cleaning out her stuff.

Yeah.  Wow.

But the first thing for me that had to come out was the pictures.  Pictures are sacred to me.  Probably because I love photography so much.  And Mom had lots of pictures.  LOTS OF PICTURES.  Really.  And on top of her own prodigious collection, she also had my Grandmother’s picture box.  Filled with more pictures.  Imagine?

Sadly, most of the people in these pictures are gone from us now.  With families who might not even know these pictures still exist.  They do.  They’re very much still around.  Mamaw saved them.  And now one of the jobs facing us is to figure out who these people are and separate the pictures into family groups and get them to their loved ones.  That’s a hard job, just so you know.  But I think it’s worth it.  To give my cousins at least something from the memories of the past.  I think they deserve that.

I understand that there’s lots of drama in our collective past.  But we are family.  There were people outside of the family who caused much of that pain.  But when you examine the truth you see that the reasons for those upsets were based on stories told by people who were… how shall I say this?… far less than truthful?  Yeah, that’s it.

And no matter what their words are today, their actions speak much louder.  Hummels held hostage and an entire legacy gone missing, and yet this same person is on Facebook today talking about Jesus’ love and forgiveness?  He better hope Jesus forgives him… because – newsflash – I won’t.  Not ever.  Discuss amongst yourselves.  Ready, go.

Today I want to fix some of the wrongs.  If I can.  And I’m starting with the pictures.  Be ready cousins.  There’s lots coming at you.  Memories from our past.  From our roots.  And I know it won’t make everything perfect, but it’s a start.  After all Life isn’t perfect, ever.  It just happens, in all it’s messy and unkempt glory.  And if we’re smart we’ll celebrate it, because it was our life.

Pictures of the past.  Showing us our present.  Showing us who we were and helping us know who we are today.

Pictures.

Life.

Family.