If I’m lucky, my funeral notice will read something like, Bruce Devereaux passed away of natural causes in his sleep last March. It was a during a lovely thunderstorm and he’d just finished watching Groundhog Day while drinking a few beers. A service will be held this coming August, if time permits.
If I’m not so lucky, the service will be much, much sooner. Possibly within days of my passing.
We were at a friend’s place for dinner tonight and we were looking through their baby albums and pics on their computer having a hearty laugh at their children’s expense when it suddenly occurred to me we couldn’t do this. It’s not that we don’t have any photos, it’s that we have too many. We couldn’t flick through a couple of files on our computer and bring up a few dozen happy snaps because we don’t have a couple of files: we have thousands.
To give you an idea of how many photos we have, the first year Tracey had a digital camera she took 10,000 photos. We know this because she needed to take a hundred or so on the night of the last day of the year to reach this target. This problem has partly come about because we (by which I mean Tracey) don’t delete photos in this house.
That was in 2003, with a nifty little 1mp Canon. We were very pleased with ourselves. Clearly, we weren’t thinking of the end game.
And if anything, since then, Tracey’s clicking finger has been working even harder as the cameras have gotten bigger, better and more of a drain on our digital storage options. It is no coincidence she’s become a professional photographer – just a natural extension of her favourite hobby.
You know how at a funeral these days the family has a slide show of the deceased running during the eulogy? That might be a problem when I pass on. I suspect one, or maybe two, family members will need to take a few months off work to troll through our mass of digital hard drives to find even a few dozen usable pictures of me.
That is, as I say, if I’m lucky.
“They won’t go through all our photos,” said my good wife. “Not when they can just grab a few snaps off Instagram.”
Naturally, this had me flicking through the phone to see how much Instadamage has been done. And well, as you can see below….
…so much for my dignified exit 😉
When not typing away over here and checking his stats every two minutes Bruce Devereaux hangs out at his ‘BIG FAMILY little income’ Facebook Page.
’raising a family on little more than laughs’
Bad luck on the dignified exit, looks like you’ll exit the way you lived. Making people laugh. Which truly isn’t that bad. Good luck on dying peacefully in your sleep of old age. Hope that part comes true at least. Because if you do get to watch your own funeral it could be mortifying to discover that the way you actually died made people laugh also. (I’m sure that couldn’t be possible though.)
So long as I don’t make the Darwin awards 🙂
I hear you!!!
It’s overwhelming when I think of sorting it all :/
I’ve suggested the photographer in the family handle this 🙂
I just wanted to say I recently stumbled upon your blog and am so happy I did! I love reading your posts. You are hilarious! So keep up the good work and don’t die.
=)
Well I’ve made it to morning lol In bed Tracey and I were chuckling at how ironic it would be if I went in my sleep last night.
Haha. I think that other than a couple of terrible selfies after new hair cuts, people would just surmise that I turned into the Little Mister as soon as he was born. I’m never in my photos anymore! I also plead guilty to taking too many photos. However, I am relieved and so happy that I do take too many. As a result, since losing two precious grandparents in only a few months, I feel blessed that I took so many gorgeous shots of them with my family – makes for great memories.
Initially I had me dying on a Friday in this post, but then it occurred to me – What! And miss the weekend!! So on further consideration my ideal death has been moved to a Sunday night 🙂