6. A Photo Memory

I knew there was a reason why I introduced you to Larry. Here's what happened. I was always giving Larry these physical jobs: cutting grass, shoveling snow. And I thought this time I'm going to give him a job that's fun. And so I did. My friend Bill had loaned me his scanner and I had a huge stack of photographs that had not made it into the albums. So I decided to let Larry scan them in for me. This would be a real change of pace.

After all, I thought, scanning really wasn't something that *I* needed to do. So Larry came over and tried his best to scan these pictures. I wrote the process down, step by step, so he could just follow the list and it would be a snap. But he couldn't seem to make the correlation between each step on paper and the scanning process. I could see it was difficult work for him. He had to concentrate so darn hard and then he would forget something and I would have to go over and bail him out. This wasn't going to work.

Well, after Larry had so much trouble with these pictures, I didn't call him back the next day. Thankfully, it had snowed and he had customers who wanted their snow shoveled. I went to work scanning my "almost reject" pictures and it became apparent there was a technique to it.

How you closed the lid on the scanner, for example, could move the picture or twist it a bit. I soon learned that closing the scanner lid with one hand was more precise than closing it with two. It was better to frame a little to the inside of the photo so you didn't get bits of extraneous color, or -- even worse -- white background. It looked horrible to have a picture with a white line across the top or bottom because you didn't get a perfect fit.

That was the mechanics of the process. While my conscious mind was busy paying attention to these details, another part was doing something entirely different. Reviewing the pictures in this way was an experience in reliving my life. I didn't pay much attention to it at first as it was just old pictures. It was the past, after all. But eventually, after I saw enough pictures, I realized something else. This was a project that I needed to do myself. It needed my attention to detail and expertise. And it *was* my life.

It was a walk in the past. A second look. Similar to the months before my mom died. She went through her dresser drawers each night, while one of us was sleeping upstairs - watching after her. She would take her personal items and spread them out on the bed. We could hear rattling from her downstairs bedroom. She would look at her personal possessions and fondle them remembering her past. Her life. Her dreams.

This happened every night. It nearly drove us crazy. And we were thinking that *she* was crazy. After all, she was going to die. We knew it. She knew it. And what in the world was she doing making this big mess when she was supposed to sleep and get some rest. And of course what she was doing, was *preparing* to die. She was saying farewell to her world and to her life.

And that's what I'm trying to do. I'm preparing for my own death, but a death of a different kind. I'm starting a new life and now understand the value of saying goodbye to the past. Today I brought out the photo albums and thumbed through them and -- what a revelation! I could see bits and pieces from my past going back over a long time ago, when I was a young man in the military. And -- boy -- I was a different person back then. A young skinny, scrawny kid. A very different person than today.

Going through those pictures I saw people that I loved very much. Particularly my ex-wife, who I had long since parted ways with. Those pictures transported me back to that time when we were both in love. It really caught me off guard, because for a moment I was living in that time. It was as if nothing had changed. What happened is I time-traveled back to that instant as if the present didn't exist. Those same feelings were alive there. Those same passions.

I experienced how it felt to be living that moment, how it felt to be a couple, how it felt to be young and innocent . . . And it took a long second to return to the present. To the now. I had married one very special person and then we moved on. It tasted like a bittersweet piece of chocolate.

And, don't you know, the scanner broke after I finished that 6 inch stack of pictures. The darn scanner broke on me. It wasn't mine anyway; it was my friend Bill's, so I went shopping and all the store scanners were overpriced. I went online and found a similar model that was not so expensive. It was essentially the same as Bill's scanner, but improved. I had liked his scanner, the software, and the way it operated, so I stuck with that. I ordered it today and it will come in maybe a week or so.

In the meantime all the albums are pulled out and I plan to go through and sort the pictures so I can group them according to categories. Because going through pictures ... it really is a revelation. This whole business of having a camera . . . is teaching me what life is all about. Because life isn't permanent. It changes. The winds of change never let up. And I'm starting to come to terms with it. Starting to understand that change is part of the game.

So, I have a week to go until the scanner arrives. And that's just as well. It's rather difficult to sit on a hard kitchen stool and operate the scanner. I might just move it to the back bedroom where there is an office chair with padding. That's a thought.