Pictures of You

I've been thinking a lot lately about how much memories impact your life, your identity...even your sense of worth. When you share memories with people, you have a feeling of connectedness. You have have a sense of not being alone. But what happens when the people who share your memories and your history start to disappear, when your circle dwindles and you're left with only your own memories and stacks of photographs and mementos to prove that your history was, in fact, more than simply a conjured dream? 
Family holds such a rich history, a complicated tapestry of stories and memories and dreams. And with each day that passes, we lose more and more of those moments. Memories fade, people grow old and die. And we look back on our time together and wish we'd had more, that we'd realized how much the loss would hurt, how up-ending it would be to our own identities to suddenly know that we are now the sole possessor of a memory, a sequence of events, a shared history. We are now the only holder of that moment, of that snapshot, that feeling. 
The realization makes me want to capture my family forever in a bottle, to preserve their voices and faces and stories. There are so many things that, while I know these people, I don't know everything. and some things I will never know. So many stories that I haven't heard from my grandparents and my parents. So many questions I want to ask, so many questions I haven't thought to ask. I want to know everything. I want to hold it in my hands and look at it and turn it over and over in my fingers and know what makes them the people that they are. I want to know so that I will know more of what makes me who I am, to know where I come from. I want to hear the stories and understand their hurts and joys, their dreams and their sorrows. I want to see time through their eyes and pass it on so that our family is not lost, so that their eventual passing will not mean the disappearance of the memory. 
Take the chance. Ask the question. Sit down and learn who they are, and then maybe you'll know a little more about who you are.