family photos

Daddy’s 5,840 Slides

| Flower Roberts

I got the neighbor’s children to help move all the boxes of slides and the three projectors to one place in the basement. I was tired of looking at them every day. They have been downstairs for months now. I am finally strong enough to go down the steps. I went down yesterday to look and take photos. I need to know what is ahead of me.

The slide closet in the basement.

Each box with a reel in it potentially holds 140 slides. There are 41 reel boxes and a shoe box of little boxes and random letters. That means there could be 5,840 slides.

Three projectors and more slides.

My sister and I purged hundreds of inherited slides when we emptied our parents’ house. These inherited slides were mostly of people we did not know in places we had not been. There were even hundreds of double slides and a binocular stereoscope viewer. At first we were careful and respectful in our purging. By the end we were thinking these folks were self-absorbed and took way too many photos of their dog and cat.

My plan is to purge and color-code these thousands of slides while I am snowed in this winter. I will keep a fire going in Daddy’s big stove as I sort through sixty years of slides. This sounds like a great way to spend snowy days. Mr. Flower bought me a lovely blue Lodge pan for cooking on the stove if there is a power outage. Daddy would have loved that.

I have done some sorting before when old friends were coming to stay here on the mountain. We hiked Grandfather Mountain with this family in our younger years. We made a slide show just for them. Their color was purple.

It was a wonderful visit. The last before my parents passed. We suspected such and wanted it to be perfect.

I am determined not to leave this purging task for my children to tackle. I will confess that the inheritance of stuff has changed the course of my life. I do not want my two children to be overwhelmed by what I leave behind. They have too much stuff of their own right now.

I will bravely tackle this task for the sake of the family that follows, so they won’t have to wonder,  ‘”Who are these folks? Where are they? and ” Who is that spoiled beagle in all these photos?”

FLOWER and the slides

Saving Family Memories and My Sanity.

| Flower Roberts

The three generations of women before me ended their lives with dementia. My great grandmother’s demise may have started when her husband was killed by a train when his truck stalled on the tracts which crossed through their farm.

Maternal greatgrand parents

She heard the crash. Then she spent her remaining years moving back and forth every six months between her daughter in Ohio and her daughter in North Carolina. I remember sitting on her bed at Gran’s house going through a photo album of old black and white photos as she talked about each photo. I was too young to understand how sad this was. I have those photos now.

Maternal greatgrandmother


My gran’s confusion started when she inherited a house full of thousands of lovely things from her aunt.

Great Aunt Ethel

There were enough treasures in Aunt Ethel’s house to fill all Gran’s daughters and granddaughter’s houses with unusual furniture, clothes, art, jewelry and dishes. This sorting overwhelmed her brain at her time of grief and years after.

My mama has dementia now. Maybe her trigger was worrying about my daddy’s health. She hovered over him like it was her hobby. It was hard to witness a brilliant woman turn into a shadow.

Daddy and Mama


I have been overwhelmed since clearing the family home this past summer. We sorted through sixty-three years of everything. The heirlooms went to the mountains. Many boxes came here.


When I am home, I feel their presence. I must sort them to be free. So here I am again, evaluating, burning, consolidating. Will I ever be done? Or will my brain balk at the task and slowly shut down to protect itself.

Sorting and consolidating

I cannot leave such a burden for my children, especially Rose. Her museum is already full.

Mama FLOW