I saw the item in my storage unit and could not remember whose it originally was.
It was in my parents’ home. It was in the room my Mom used as an office. But when I first looked at it, I could not remember whose it was. A few hours later, I remembered that it belonged to my Grandma Neill’s sister–Lillian (Trautvetter) Short.
We moved items from my parents’ home quickly after my father passed. I thought I would never forget who items originally belonged to. It became apparent that I easily could forget and that the risk of that was only getting higher as time marched on.
What I should have done is quickly identified the pieces as they were either packed up from my parents’ home or being taken out of the truck we used to transport them. Video clips of the item with my narration would probably have been the ideal way initially. Envelopes with a brief note of origin could have been included in other items.
I should have done something initially with these items–nothing fancy, nothing full of citational verbiage that would make citation fanatics swoon, but something. Later I could have gotten fancy and clever, but something needed to be done initially so that at least something was done.
Annotated video, pictures along with text as a digital file, and envelopes in the items are what I’m initially doing. But something is better than nothing because many times even that something never gets done.
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