Amending the Wedding Album

Today marks day # 5 of the flu...and it is getting OLD, folks. For a girl who loves to get up and go, sitting/sleeping for days on end can make one crazy. Thankfully, I am feeling better each day and will hopefully return to school tomorrow, if my temperature is normal in the morning. Today it was 100 degrees, so we bailed on nursery duty at church and church, and are still sitting at home in PJ's. (It's lucky for me that I think you can never have too many PJ's- this comes in handy when you wear a different pair each day!)

I am still weak and tired, but feeling well enough to do a little scrapbooking today, so I decided to add some comments to the one I am currently working on (keep in mind that I am a year behind) and do some amending to our wedding album.

Our wedding photographer was awesome-and a year after our wedding she allowed us to purchase our digital negatives for a very reasonable price. Actually, I worked in her office doing a little organizing and archiving for her the summer after we got married, so I essentially bartered my way into owning the DVD of 500 images. Once ours, I huffed it to Wolf Camera and had most of the photos printed so that I could design our wedding album in a black leather scrapbook.

I thought I was so cool- photos with white borders, book with black leather binding and black pages, even these vintage corner mounters that were black and would hold each photo down. It DOES look cool, but multiply 4 corner mounters by at least 300 photos and you have a LOT of licking to do. Yes, licking. I did not buy the corner mounters that come with adhesive on them...oh no, I bought the ones you lick-n-stick. I was going for the real vintage album. By the 100th lick I was really wishing that I had chosen another way, but I had begun, so I had to finish. I sat in sweltering heat (this was before we installed central air this past fall) and licked and stuck, licked and stuck.

My album looked awesome. I was finished. It got the place of honor on a bookshelf and is pulled down once or twice a year for us to peruse. It does make me feel like we are back on that day...reliving all the emotion. It is a treasure. I gave the extra black pages to a friend and called it a wrap.

Then late last December, I got an email from an old friend who said, "I have been meaning to mail you a cd of some pictures we took at your wedding. I am sorry it's been 2 1/2 years, but I know you'll want them. There are some really special ones of you and your grandmother in there." The CD arrived around the end of the 1st week in January, and she was right, the ones of my grandma were precious. Our wedding day had also been her wedding day to my late grandfather, which is one reason we'd chosen it. In lieu of a bouquet toss, I'd given my bouquet to my Nana, and though she had Alzheimer's and did not know me by name, I know she felt touched and some connection was made.

Our photographer had snapped shots of this moment, but none captured the emotion that my friend had caught. This photograph quickly became a new favorite.

On January 14th, one week after receiving the photo, I learned that my Nana had died in her sleep, in her bed, at her home. It was bittersweet- a blessing that she would no longer live with Alzheimer's, but so sad to lose a woman with such joy, love, and compassion. I had known her as a girl, but Alzheimer's had robbed me of knowing her as a woman and I would have given almost anything for a few moments to listen to her wisdom in this stage of my life. I printed the photo and took it to the funeral home for visitors to see. I hope that they saw her beauty and how much she was loved.

Today I used dental floss and carefully peeled away some of the corner mounters and photos in our wedding album, rearranging them in order to make a special spot for this one. It does not have white borders or match the same clarity or color tone as the professional shots, but it captures a memorable, tender moment between me and my Nana, on a day of days for us both.