Talk Without Speaking

It was a blur and I don’t really remember but in the days following Dad’s death one of the things that occurred was that his hard drive was backed up. He had been writing a book on the history of shipbuilding in Canada and, of course, it was important that was saved along with all his other stuff.

I’ve had a copy of that backup DVD sitting on my shelf for 2.5 years.

At some point, many months ago, it suddenly occurred to me (I can only blame the brain-altering nature of grief to explain why it hadn’t dawned on me earlier) that all of Dad’s photos were on that DVD as well.

I’ve got a finite number of pictures of Dad. I’ve struggled with the awareness that these might be the only pictures of Dad that I continue to look at for….what? the rest of my life, I guess. These are the sorts of things that strike you or rather these are among the things that have struck me.

Last Saturday, on my day off, I sat down at my computer and I put that disk in my drive. Then I went and got my bottle of Scotch.

Later, with the awesome help of James and Chris, I managed to get all of the full-res image files moved off Dad’s disk and onto my computer without bringing over all the thumbnail files. Thanks immensely guys – you rock.

With the help of the new version of Aperture (awesome) and with occasional doses of both Scotch and Lara, I managed to make it through and catalogue all 2400 pictures.

Suffice to say, it’s surreal and I’m still processing the emotional side of this project.

Note that these pics are all from my Dad, I don’t take credit for them