Precious Old Pictures - Page 1

If you're not feeling sentimental, I suggest you give this thread a skip.

I am planning to move soon, and have begun going through my belongings and discarding stuff I don't want. My late husband was an avid  photographer, and I have literally boxes of photos to sort through. When we were on our honeymoon, he got duplicates made of all the photos he took, so last night, I was sorting through these photos, and tossing the duplicates and any shots too blah or out of focus to be worth keeping.

In one particular package of photos, I found not only several of my favourite pictures of him from our honeymoon, but also pictures of my very first dog, a GSD rescue I named Lili Marlene.

When I found her, she was the most pathetic looking bag of bones you have ever seen. She was 26 inches tall and weighed 35 lbs! The vet wasn't sure she was going to live, but once she knew she was loved, and had a secure home, she began to bounce back.

These photos are the only really good ones I ever took of her, and I thought they were lost forever. Her time with me was short, as she developed ankylosing spondylitis in the spine, and gradually lost the use of her hind legs. You can see from the way she's sitting in one of the photos that her hind end is starting to go.

There were also some wonderful shots of my friend's collie mix, Brandy. Brandy and Lili got along very well, and when she was no longer able to stand rough play, he would lie or sit on the floor with her, and they would 'face fight'. I wish I had a video of it. It was really quite funny. They'd play growl and snap at each other. then the force of them bonking their heads together would make them sneeze....ARrrgg..growlll, growwlll, snap! Clunk, clunk....AACHOOOO!!  They'd get so loud sometimes that we'd have to hush them up if we were trying to talk on the phone!

My friend, Sharon, played a very important role in my life when it came to my dogs. She invited me to come and share a house with her, when I was living on the 11th floor of a high rise with Lili. She was also the one who found the dog in my sig picture (Tasha) wandering the streets as a stray, and brought her home. I had her for 14 years. Sharon also got to know Roger very well, as he was courting me at the time I was living with her. When I move in September, we are going to be neighbours, and I'm very happy about that. We had some great times together, and it's nice to be able to share memories with someone who knew my husband so well. I'm sure she'll be absolutely thrilled to see these old photos of her dog Brandy, who's been gone quite a number of years now!

Here's the link. I"ve included a couple of unrelated photos that were in the same packet, just for fun, and because they, too are very special to me. The second picture of Roger shows the side of him that made me fall in love with him, the side that was forever 10 years old. The last photo shows how true Canadians survive the winter....ohhh, yes, life is hard! The Springer spaniel in the photo is my mom's dog, Josie, a former Canadian champion. I don't recall the mutt's name. The people are, right to left: my mom, her neighbours and best friends, Danielle and Marc, and my mom's husband, Larry.  This photo is special because she is my birth mom, (not the mother who raised me) and we had been reuinited for the first time only a few month's previously. I think this was only the second or third time we'd gotten together.

http://s14.photobucket.com/albums/a344/Sunsilver/Old%20Photos/

Love those!  Thanks for sharing. 

there's nothing like a move to really force you to "clean house". the problem with going thru pictures is that you start thinking back to the "old times" and it takes forever! lili marlene was a beautiful girl and bless you for making her life good and decent. good luck in your move. now, i feel the need to go look thru some of my old pics!!

Yeah, angusmom, I'd been hesitating to do it, because I was afraid  the sad memories re. all the people who are gone would overwhelm me. It went better than I'd thought it would, though and finding these photos absolutely made my night. But I can only do so much at a time, then I have to take a break.

Nice photos Sunsilver and clearly you have some wonderful memories. I too have a huge box of photos reflecting certain parts of my life. I do fear however that in this digital age, just as people rarely write letters anymore because of email, we also rarely take photos with anything but a digital camera. If we are not fanatical about saving to disks etc., those photos can often disappear when the computer hard drive crashes. So your post also reminds me to be certain I save those things that help me recall the special places, dogs and people in my life. I have been blessed to have many of each.

Some day, I hope to find the time to scan all of Roger's photos and slides to disc, and make copies for his sons (my step-sons). However, when I do that, I will still keep the originals, in case the discs get lost, or technology changes so much that they are no longer readable, as happened with the switch from floppy discs to CD's.