After driving around I wound up at the cemetery. We recently lost my Grandfather as well, Jordon Holthouse. So I went over to his grave, he didn't have a headstone yet, the grass had just started growing over dirt. Just a small plaque with his name on it. I took my phone out of my pocket and opened up facebook. My family had all been contributing to a giant photo album of all the pictures we had with him over the years. A huge catalog of memories and lives he had been part of.
Just a little South West of where we laid my grandfather to rest, one of my best childhood friends was laid to rest far to early. Now I have two children of my own. I just put them to sleep. They found there footy jammies, both to big, but both terribly excited to get to put them on again. We laid in the bunk beds I built for them last year watched videos of pigs. My youngest loves pigs right now. I spent a lot of time pretended to be a pig, tickling them, squeezing them, typical bedtime nonsense that is sure to get me in trouble with my wife for riling them up. I am ok with that because they wont always let me play with them like that, and I am going to take what I can get when I can get it.
I am way off track. I always am, so anyway. I have thousands of pictures of these children. Pictures, videos, gifs, audio recordings, some printed out, many posted to various social media sites, some on this blog, and a boatload on my computer, that is then split between multiple offsite and on site backups. These children are written in the ink of the internet. With google photos i can search for them based off there faces, and scroll back through a timeline of their lives. Watch them go from infants to the children I see every morning, and you may have issues with the little devices we all carry around that keep us connected 24-7, but I am so grateful for all it.
I am not one to take a million pictures of everything either. I prefer to experience things most of the time and keep the phone tucked away, but during the years I was putting in crazy hours and not seeing my children till sunday, I loved that my wife could snap a picture, or turn on a video chat. It's no replacement for the real thing, but it's so much better than nothing.
This picture I have at the top of this blog is one of my favorites. I have a copy of it that has been on almost all my fridges since college. I blew it up into a poster that has been on the walls of all the places I have lived. I have no idea what was going on that day, I don't remember anything from then, but I just don't have much more. I have one other pic from when we we're older, and somewhere in my moms basement is a video tape that we made where we made up commercials and had a "demolition derby" and I'll be backing that up to my hard drive as well. I was not blessed with a very good memory when it comes to people or interactions of my own life. I can't tell you how often my sisters and mother let me know that something I thought happened only happened in my head. Same with my wife. I forget voices, events, even faces. This media we all generate is something I cherish.
Sure it can swallow you up, but as I stood in front of his grave I wished facebook was a thing then. I wished we'd all had smart phones in junior high. I wish he'd had a blog. We we're all just discover AIM and ICQ. Social media consisted of the smart kids angel fire pages and hamster dance. We loved our video cameras back when they took a VHS, had we come up a few years later I know that we'd have a huge catalog of incredibly stupid videos we knew we're awesome, and no matter how dumb and cringeworthy they would be to me know I would love to have them.
I still miss my friend. One of the few I'd call a brother. I mean there's a very short list of humans I can get into a fist fight with and then go over 2 hours later to play basketball with. I wish I could've seen the man he grew into, I wish our kids could have met. I wish he could've met my wife, I think he'd approve. He was a great friend.
Love you Brett
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