Why wait till they hear your funeral eulogy to let your family and friends know what you did with your life?
We often hear people saying ”We should have got Uncle Fred to tell us more about his life and now he’s gone and it’s too late.” It’s a tragedy that so much of our living history is lost. I’ve know people who were in Darwin when it was bombed in WW2, who fought at Tobruk and who played in famous international cricket series, but I’ll never hear a lot of the details and probably neither will their families.
Not many of us lead lives that would make a good movie script, but each of our life stories is of interest to close family and friends and it all helps to keep family histories alive.
With all the technology available now, it’s not that difficult to put your life history onto a computer. (You’ll certainly save your eulogy writer a lot of trouble at your funeral). Depending on your level of computer competence, or your access to a helpful 12 year old, your history can be anything from a typed document which you print, a voice recording, or a video with old photos, newspaper clippings and interviews with you and old friends. You can then give DVDs to whoever you want.
I can speak from experience as I went through the exercise last year. I figured I would tell my story while I could still remember it. There was lots of stuff my kids didn’t know about my early life when I was an irresponsible teenager and a young man travelling through some exotic countries. I hoped that the video would answer lots of questions they might want answered at some time in the future and give them an idea what life was like before the arrival of television and computers. (yes, there was life before TV).
Google makes it relatively easy to research major events on Australia and overseas in the 60s and 70s, so it wasn’t that hard to sketch in the background. I certainly felt some trepidation when I sent off a few DVDs before Christmas, not knowing what response my amateur video would generate.
Fortunately, I needn’t have worried as the calls from close family were very positive. The really interesting response was from the younger generation, who obviously thought that I was a boring elderly relative. To be told by an enthusiastic 18 year old that that she didn’t realise that I was “so cool” was an unexpected bonus.
So it’s not that hard and it’s highly likely that close family and friends will appreciate you sharing your story with them. The other benefits are that the fish can be bigger, the sporting achievements more spectacular and your past more colourful than history would otherwise report.
Paul McKeon