Losing a beloved relative is hard, whether you are processing a sudden death or honoring someone who lived a long life. If you are particularly close to this family member, you may be in charge of sorting through their belongings and dividing mementos among other siblings and cousins. Along with decades of clothes, furniture, and other home items, you could be left with photos, videotapes, scrapbooks, and other collectible memories.
You can commemorate the memories of a deceased relative by keeping these prints and videos close at hand. Follow these steps to collect, preserve memories with a professional photo and sliding scanning service, and share these memories of your lost loved one.
1. Sort Through the Memories of Your Relative
Every photo you take is a memory you want to preserve, from the latte art you share on Instagram to the first pictures of your newborn daughter. Your relative did the same thing. The photos they took and saved over the years reflected the memories they wanted to keep. They might have videos of wedding ceremonies and photos that are snapshots of their childhood.
This is why it is so important to honor and commemorate the memories of a deceased relative. These memories paint a picture of who they are and they are also part of your family history. As you clean out their house and start to donate their belongings, take time to sort through their memories. Place photos in different boxes or Ziploc bags depending on the years they were taken. Use clues like the fashion at the time, houses and rooms in the background, or the ages of family members in the photos to determine their place in history.
This project might take a while. If your relative has several boxes of photos and videotapes, it could take a few weeks to sort through the memories. However, it is worth it to honor the memories of a deceased relative.
2. Digitize the Memories to Preserve Them
After a relative passes away, your family inherits their assets and belongings. While you might want to save holiday decorations from your childhood or a few pieces of jewelry they always wore, you might not have the space to store several boxes of photo prints in your home. You also can’t place these memories in a storage unit because they can easily fade, melt, and break down in the heat.
One way to honor and commemorate the memories of a deceased relative is to digitize their memories. Once you sort through the photos and videos, ship them to Memory Fortress. We can scan and save the files on a USB drive, external hard drive, or other storage option. You will never have to worry about the boxes of photos getting damaged or the VHS tapes wearing beyond use.
It’s okay if your relative has thousands of photos that he or she collected over the years. We can handle large-scale scanning projects and easily complete this project. Once you ship your memories to us, your work is done.
One of the main benefits of digitizing files to commemorate the memories of a deceased relative is that the photos and videos don’t have to stay with you. One person doesn’t have to be responsible for holding on to the memories and sharing them with others.
Look into different options for sharing files in formats that are easily accessible and sharable. For example, if you took ownership of a relative’s Gmail account and cleared it out, you can store the photo memories there. Your other family members can access the files on the Google Drive when they want to look back on photos and videos.
You can also share these digitized memories on social media through the deceased relative’s Facebook pages. Create albums for different events and decades for family members to view. See if your relative set up a Legacy Contact and build a Memorialized profile where family members can write notes to their loved one and share memories with other people who loved them.
4. Ask Family Members to Contribute to Your Project
A relative’s passing is often a reminder to appreciate your family and the people around you. If you are working to honor the memories of a deceased relative by digitizing their memories, consider working with living relatives to pull together a comprehensive family history.
One of the hard parts of digitizing memories after a relative passes away is that you can’t ask them about certain places or subjects in the photos. You have to organize the prints as best as you can with context clues. However, by working with living relatives, you can ask questions, hear stories, and learn about their lives.
See if any relatives want to collaborate on a major photo digitization project to preserve your family history. You don’t have to limit this project to older relatives, either. Any family member with piles of photos or messy files of memories can participate to sort, document, and preserve their memories.
5. Look for Ways to Display Digital Memories
One of the risks of digitizing memories is that you won’t look at the photos as often as you like. In the same way that photo prints get lost in the back of closets or placed on top shelves, digital files can get saved on drives and forgotten.
Take steps to keep these memories visible to your family members. You can invest in digital picture frames in your home that display changing photos. You can set your computer desktop to switch images periodically with different memories. There are multiple creative options depending on what works for you.
Try to make sure your efforts to share photo memories extend beyond your viewing. This way your siblings, cousins, children, nieces, and other relatives can all appreciate the digitized photos of their lost loved one.
We Can Help You Honor the Memories of a Deceased Relative
Our team at Memory Fortress helps people preserve all kinds of family photos, videos, and mementos. You can take steps today to digitize your photos or send us the memories captured by a deceased relative. Our goal is to make sure these pictures and videos last forever, so your memories of this family member stay fresh.
Take the first steps to preserve and commemorate your deceased relative’s memories and make them sharable with the rest of your family. Start your order with Memory Fortress so you can build your digital family history.
We digitize everything right here at our facility in metro Atlanta, processed by US citizens.