A few months ago, my dad sent me the most amazing email. Attached was an mp3 ripped from an old reel-to-reel tape recording of one of my Granddaddy’s sermons. My mother’s father was a Methodist minister, and he passed away when I was still a little boy. I never knew him as a man, he existed only in my memory as Granddaddy, a very affectionate but hazy memory of a sweet old man.
That is, until I got that email and listened to that mp3… It was like history coming alive in my ear. I hadn’t heard the sound of my Granddaddy’s voice in about 20 years. But upon hearing it, I instantly recognized it, and he sounded so familiar to me. It was a very emotional experience. The sermon was about David and Goliath. I know that story already, but I had never heard him tell it before. I feel like I got to know him a little bit better just by hearing him tell that old familiar story and hearing his voice, his choice of words, what he chose to emphasize, etc.
What’s fascinating to me about this is that several generations ago, this would have been an impossible experience. Take my Granddaddy, who grew up on a farm during the Great Depression. When he was my age and had young children of his own, he certainly didn’t have any kind of digital archive of his ancestors. Every artifact he would have had from his family lineage would have had merely a physical form: a tattered old letter, a worn photograph, a faded old newspaper. 20 years after his grandparents passed away, he would have never heard their voices again.
You children are blessed and cursed with every moment of your life being documented in a digitally archivable form. The pictures we’ve taken of you at every step of your life may not meet the same quality standards of future generations. Fine. But they won’t ever fade, and they are so much easier to backup safely than physical copies that past generations had to rely on. We can back those digital files up online in the cloud, send exact duplicates to everyone in the family, etc. It will never be something we lose if our house burns down or gets broken into. If I ever want to show you an old family picture, I can just search an account online somewhere and pull it up on the web.
Your life will leave behind a permanent digital footprint. We’ve been working on it since the day you were born. This can be a scary thing but also a beautiful thing. If and when you have children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren of your own, you will have so much more material to share with them than any other generation that has ever come before you. I treasure these mp3s of my Granddaddy’s sermons. They connect me to him in a way I didn’t think was possible anymore, and they make my memory of him more complete. I can’t imagine the depth and breadth of what your mother and I will be able to share with both of you.
Your mother and I will hand down memories of our families and of you, our precious children. You will add to that family history with your own memories, and you may someday pass that down to your children. This is how it has always been. The difference is how much more will survive each generation now that these memories are increasingly digital and archivable. You may not appreciate this at first, but someday, that link to your past will be an overwhelming joy in your life.