family connection

this week i have been smiling. a lot. memories have been stirred by family far and wide. i forget sometimes how connected this world can be over the world wide web. on monday my youngest cousin contacted me through this space. i had no idea she was reading. it was such a lovely surprise to get her comments and have her open up a whole new memory stream of our grandparents. no matter what age we are nor where we are located, the power of words evoking memory can be surprising, even on a computer screen.

one of the most used places for connection online i would imagine is facebook. and facebook was the location that brought further memories flooding back with the help of pictorial evidence. on tuesday my brother posted a photo of our family tartan and suddenly my sister was photographing her old photo album and posting the evidence. yes, that's me in the tartan jacket and my brother in the kilt.

these pictures were taken at the wedding of our beloved cousin pete (left in the above photo). the following day his brother in law alan took up the baton, posting photos we had never seen before.

these pictures were taken in the front garden of the house i grew up in. memories flooded back of an innocent age spent playing in wide open spaces. so much of it we took for granted and only realise with the benefit of experience the privileges we were afforded. yes the photos are old and the colour faded but our memories have not. especially when we remembered these pictures were taken on the day charles and diana got married. we had a big family get together, the glaswegian branch of the family needing a place to watch the wedding on their way to france offered the excuse needed to get together and party. these pictures are made all the more poignant as the bottom photo shows my dad (centre) with his big brothers jimmy (left) and derek (right). we lost dad when he was 57, jimmy when he was 60 and his son pete when he was 27. it all started nearly 20 years ago but i can guarantee we can all remember it like it was yesterday. it is good to see these images and keep their memory alive, to keep telling each other their stories, to keep writing our history.

hello my family. those that are gone; i miss you. those that are here; i love you. stay in touch.

Emma