Life, actually…

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THE EYES OF A BILLION BEHOLDERS

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“There’s nothing on the back of this picture,” one bookshop browser comments. She is rummaging through stacks of old family snapshots adrift in a basket. She glances up dismissively and flips the image aside.

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“Who would want to keep pictures of people they don’t know?” she inquires of the world at large.

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Who indeed, I wonder. Who would want to enshrine images of random humans living random lifetimes? I hope to get a word in edgewise when she approaches check-out time.

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“Looky here,” her playmate for the day speaks up. She’s gazing at a proof sheet of wedding pictures. Black-and-white women dressed in one-day party garb. Uncomfortable men in rented tuxes. Punch bowls and clear glass cups and decorated cakes surround them.

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“Whose wedding is this? Why are they in the store?”

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I can’t help but answer, “We don’t know whose wedding this is. They are here because their family threw them away.” I let that soak in.

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“But why would somebody trash their own family?” she wonders.

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“Well, we adopt these thrown-away photographs, these unknown and un-identified folks because they ARE family.” I know this sounds corny but it’s true. “They are part of the World’s family.”

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The browser is still picking out old baby pictures, snaps of somebody’s grandmother, shaken prints of kids and dogs and pedal cars. None marked for posterity. All tossed.

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She muses, “I just threw away a lot of old family albums because I don’t know anybody in them.” She pauses half a beat and wonders, “Should I keep these things? Where would I put them…” her voice fades and she stands there, her arms full of imaginary lifetimes.

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Whenever I feel I’m preaching too much I simply say something like, “If you are ever on your way to a dumpster to get rid of scrapbooks, snapshots, postcards, letters, diaries, documents and so on, just drop them by the shop. We’ll make sure they get into proper hands.”

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She listens and decides to think about it later.

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People have all kinds of opinions about the things they discard.

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Your trash may be my treasure. And vice versa no doubt.

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Archivists preserve things you and I wouldn’t dream of retaining.

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You and I save stuff archivists might shun.

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It gets worse, it gets better, depending on what you do next.

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Combing through the lives of discarded people gives me a chance to appreciate them one more time—or for the very first time. A chance to tell them, perhaps posthumously, that they did matter. Mattered enough to become fond memory icons in obscure old bookshops and ephemera emporiums.

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A chance to return to life for at least a few moments. Historic markers of how important they once were to those who practiced the art of saving and cherishing small lovely memories

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© 2025 A.D. by Jim Reed