Where Will Our History Go?

I was reading an article in Readers digest today, yes I read it and i'm under 50, about a woman who lost her mother but found her through the writings she left behind.  It was touching and a moving story and got me to thinking about my grandmother, my mother and my son.

In the article the woman found letters, journals, a whole family history while combing through her mothers things after her death.  She rediscovered the woman who raised her, the woman her mother was before she was a mother, the deep love her mother had for her father.  I can say that my mother, myself, and i'm sure other family members had these same type of revelations while helping to clean up my grandmothers things after her passing.  It was a gift from her in a time when I was hurting greatly, a chance to feel closer to her again from a few scraps of paper found here and there.  Journals kept, letters written, old cards that she kept and pictures I drew as a child reminded me that she loved me, and I her.

My mother is an avid writer, keeping journals and books of poetry and stories.  Hopefully the day is long off when I will have to collect her things and sort through them, but I know with a certainty I will receive the same gift my grandmother left for me.......words! Ink on paper, thoughts, feeling, the private things that make the people we love the people we love so much.  And tho alot of what I found about my grandmother was stuff I already knew, her words were something I could hold on to, it was like getting to keep a piece of her.

My thoughts soon led to my son.  Thankfully i'm an avid journaler as my mother is, but in this day and age its a dying trait.  We live in the land of Facebook and twitter.  A place where instead of carefully placing photos into albums we post them straight from our phones without the need to develop them.  When my day on this earth is done and my son is seeking the same comfort I got from finding my grandmothers words, what will he find?  Shall I leave him my passwords on a scrap of paper?  Shall he log into my face book to see the trivial things I posted on a daily bases, the games I played?  Will he seek solace in my little jokes and statuses?  Shall I leave him the combo to my phone so that he can see that I took daily snap shots of him because I love his beautiful little face?  Shall I leave him my email passwords so that he can see the countless emails I sent out to friends and family announcing his accomplishments and our pride in him? Will he know and remember the stories of how his father and I fell in love and how much we wanted a child?

Thankfully I've kept love letters from my husband, letters from my mother and grandmother from when I was younger and years worth of journals but how many of us can say the same?  What will we leave for our children to know us, to get comfort when their worlds no longer have us in it?  How will we let them know of our joys our struggles our losses the things that make us human.

Maybe......just maybe, as wonderful as this information age is, maybe there are some "old fashioned" things we should be fighting a little harder to keep.  Some how I don't think my son will gain the comfort i found in my computer.  So this year I think i'll journal more, maybe fill my journal with pictures of our summer, and I might actually send a letter to his grandmother................the old fashioned way!!!!!  Hes worth the effort, and part of being a mom is thinking about our children's future..........even when we're not here.