my story revisited #183-another way to lose memories

MY STORY REVISITED #183-ANOTHER WAY TO LOSE MEMORIES

this is a picture of me when i was 5 years old
i have maybe one other picture of me around that age
i dont really have much memory of that time of my life
as i read this old blog from 8 years ago i wondered if thats what its like when alzheimers takes over 
does your old memories just fade away like my memories of being 5 years old
is that what its like
its just not there at all
anymore

i guess what happens is you lose your recent memories first in alzheimers since that part of the brain that holds recent memories gets affected or should i say infected first

amyloid accumulates amyloid plaques form tau protein tangles form inflammation sets in
then
just like that
bam
those memories are gone

i dont really save things anymore 
like cards or photos or letters 
some emails are kept but never looked at again

i do save my blogs though 
how long they will be around i dont know
but
i think if a person were to read a lot of them they would catch my essence

lost memories can be all in your head
__________
03-18-2015
LOST MEMORIES
my wife she has been spending some time recently going
through some boxes of old photographs
some are 40 years old
lots are from our kids as they grew up
memories that each photo brings back


there are not a lot of pictures around of my childhood
one from when i was 4 or 5 years old
a face shot like a school picture
but i wasnt in a school at that age
so thats what i looked like back then
then
luckily there are several of those school pictures scattered through
my school years
there are no pictures of those times that stick in my brain
as i was growing up
just memories

a picture sitting by a cousin scaring off a dog
a little blurry
but
me when i was about 4 yrs old

so i do have pictures of my childhood but only a few
we have more from our kids as they grew up
then
since the onset of computers digital cameras and cellphones
we have hundreds probably thousands of pictures
that
as i think of them
probably wont ever be around in 40 years
for others to see
heck
i recently lost 3000 photos off my cellphone a few years ago
i bad
no backup was done

but where do you backup to
the cloud
like apple cloud
theyll be there forever right
like kodak will be here forever right
wrong

a google vp just came out with some sobering news
the words used were
photographic armageddon

those words dont sound good
meaning our pictures wont be there for future generations to see
cds may last 20 years
ink jet copies gradually fade
oh they are on a flash drive
that means it will sit somewhere and never be popped into a computer
to look at
maybe possibly that flash drive wont work no more in 20 years since
there wont be a device to plug it into

do you have any vhs tapes
we do we just dont have any machine to look at them with
until
recently when my wife she found a cheap one at goodwill
memories brought back in front of us
yes laughs and tears
as we watched my parents 50 year old reunion
from the late 1980s

i keep asking people
what do we do with all our pictures

it seems if you have important pictures that you want to
preserve for future generations
make a photographic copy
put them in a box
in a low humidity environment

well my parents and my wife she and i have being doing
that for years
so
we have a box of photos to pull out and look at
and
albums of pictures to see
that brings back memories
some with a smile
some with a tear

will our photos be available to our future generations

sadly probably not
_________
i do have over 3000 photos on my computer or my phone but if i lose them i lose them
i realize that no one but me will ever look at them
i probably wont hardly ever view them
soon
if my disease progresses i will lose them all anyway

thats why i dont save stuff anymore

the organicgreen doctor