Scrapbooking As A Lifeline
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The article "Scrapbooking as a Lifeline" is about family, it was written by Kate Rothacker.
Sometimes memories are all you have.
My famliy is at a difficult stage of life right now, as my
80-year-old mother is showing increasing levels of dementia. She
needs to be reminded where she is, what we're doing, whom she is
with--even what she likes--and she's fond of telling taels from
long, long ago--sometimes repeating the same stories ten minutes
later.
I am especially grateful now that she had let me start
scrapbooking her huge stash of family pictures over a year ago.
The stories and dteails she shared with me as we sorted the
pictures at that time have become so much more than just
journaling facts for our family history. As she recedes into her
long-term memories, the information she shared while still in
the world of reality have given me a way to relate with her that
I did not have before.
When I originally sat down with her to gather this information,
I confess that it was not for her sake, but to save those
identities & family hisotries from being lost forever, so I
could include them for our family heritage.
I had no way of
knowing then that God wasn't just saving them for a faceless
future--He was preparing for a time when Mom would need someone
to connect with.
He gave me that information as a gift of
connection with my Mom so she won't be alone in her memories in
her fnial years.
So now, I can guide her as she retells the stories, and what a
delight to see her face light up as she recalls the scene again.
This was a benefit I did not expect from scrapbooking--but it is
certainly one I welcome, and I encourage you to scrapbook your
aging relatives' lives not just for the future--but to be able
to minister with those same stories.
And if you're not a scrapbooker, there are many
professional scrapbookers who will take the information you
gather and preserve it in book form for you--but what I found
out with my Mom is that the process is so much more important
than the finished product!
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