Life's Hills & Valleys

A couple of winters ago one of my projects was to scan over five hundred pages of typewritten material and have it converted into word format in order to save it on CD and USB memory stick. These pages contained my father in law's memoirs which he wrote ten years before he died. Born in eastern Canada in 1898 he lived a long and interesting life. He was orphaned having lost his mother at age four; his father at age ten and as a teenager he came out west. He started out working for farmers and in lumber camps. Later he became a homesteader; business man; horse trader; fur trader; general store keeper and post master. In his 98 years he witnessed the first automobiles, lived through the years of two world wars and the dirty thirties. To have his life story written in his own words is as precious as gold itself to our family. It was important to me that these typewritten pages were not lost in a shuffle but preserved and stored in a way in which they can be read for many years to come. Perhaps one day the memoirs will be bounded into the pages of a book.

My father in law took it upon himself to write his own memoirs for which we are extremely fortunate and grateful. His life experiences are something that future generations could never imagine. It is important that we encouraged our parents and grandparents to write about their life experiences.  We need to take it upon ourselves to make sure that their stories are recorded and stored in a safe manner. As we get older the lives of our family members get more interesting. Every life has experiences both good and bad and these stories are worth preserving. They are precious resources that need to be preserved and recorded for future generations. A written account of the life experiences of those before us are far too important to lose.

We also need to write down our own life experiences so those that come after us have knowledge of who we were and how we lived. Future generations should not have to only read what the historians write about the rich and famous. It is our personal life stories that will be most cherished by our grandchildren and the generations that come after them.