Passing on Memories
Published 10:59 am Wednesday, October 29, 2014
Dick and Jeannine Buechner are doing something unique with their family photos. Instead of risking the photos being thrown out after they pass, they are ensuring the momentos are safe by giving them to their children. –Eric Johnson/Austin Living
Dick and Jeannine Buechner have shoeboxes full of photos, but they’re not planning to keep all of them.
“I have stacks of photographs, I must have 20 photograph albums in the basement,” Jeannine said. “We just decided, nobody will even look at them when we’ve died.”
Jeannine, 83, and her husband of 62 years, Dick, 85, started thinking about the photos six to eight years ago, thought they aren’t quite sure how it started.
“I just know that when our parents died, we had to clean out their homes and whatever, and there was all kinds of photographs which we probably didn’t even look at,” Jeannine said.
“But we [didn’t] have time,” Dick finished. “At the time you don’t have time.”
Years later, Jeannine thought back to those times, and realized she didn’t want their kids to miss out on the memories those photos could bring. Since both Jeannine and Dick are retired, they have more time than they anticipate their children will when the time comes to clean out their house.
Jeannine Buechner holds a family photo at her and husband Dick’s home.
“The difference is, we’ve got time now. That’s all we’ve got is time,” Dick said. “So she can go through some of those shoeboxes of stuff, of pictures, and sort them out, and now when they send anniversary cards, birthday cards, Christmas cards, you’re gonna get two or three pictures of when you were so big.”
Jeannine added, “So we just figured, ok, we’ll give them some on occasions when we see them, because they’re just gonna dump them. And if they dump them after we give them to them, hey, we don’t care, they’re out of our house.”
The couple started years ago, when they gave their kids old photos showing when they were young. They have also started to give their grandchildren photos from when they were young. Dick and Jeannine’s oldest child, Cathy Rieber, said the grandchildren enjoy getting the photos.
Dick Buechner looks through old photos in the basement of his and wife Jeannine’s home.
“Now more recently the grandkids are getting pictures too,” Reiber said. “So I think it’s a fun, new thing for them.”
Jeannine doesn’t give recent photos away, though.
“These are old ones, and we give it to them at anniversaries, birthdays, Christmas,” she said. “Especially at Christmas time we’ll give them an envelope of old photographs, and they have so much fun, they’ll pass them around to the rest of their cousins and whatever, and everyone’s laughing about them.”
Although there are a lot of photos to look through, Reiber said it will be just as hard for the younger generation to go through photos.
“It’s a great idea,” she said. “It’s just going to get more difficult, the newer generations are going to have to dig on the computer to find their photos. You really should be getting hard copies of photos along the way.”
She added, “It kind of makes me think I need to start going through my things too. Because, we’re only on earth a short time.”
Jeannine makes sure not to give too many photos each time.
“Every Christmas, every holiday, their birthdays, whatever, we’ll give them a few, because otherwise you overwhelm them,” she said. “We give four or five of them, and they get such a kick out of it.”
She also tries to give the photos mostly when she is with the person, so she can see their reaction when they see the old memories.
“It’s just fun watching their faces and giggling and laughing,” she said.
Find the full version of this story along with so much more in the November-December edition of: AUSTIN LIVING
