A request went out a few weeks ago
for a video for the upcoming March 7 Memory Day. I started out this morning to
make a video for it, but ran into a snag right away.
I wanted to use photos and the
music from the video I have of Jim and his brother, Bill, singing “Bridge Over
Troubled Waters.” Of course, I had no idea how to make a new video with the
music from the other one. Harold decided to help, but it wasn’t long before we
discovered my program did not have the option to separate sound from the video,
but Harold’s did.
Anyway, by the time we got to
rolling on the project, we were working on Harold’s pc and he had a limited
amount of photos to use. To make a long story shorter, the project took a new
turn and instead of being a video of Memory Day, it became a memory day as we
selected photos to add to the project.
We organized the photos to begin
with the ones of Jim in Vietnam, followed by the one of Jim and me in Hawaii.
Of course, we had to have Jim with his guitar. I loved that we had the photo my
mom took of Jim on the beach in Oregon. That is one of the photos on the cover
of Alzheimer’s Anthology of Unconditional
Love.
One of the important things to me
was to have the photo of Whitney when Jim began to sing about “silver girl.”
This photo was taken of Whitney’s performance during the Miss Pettis County
contest. She said that she felt her Grandpa Jim’s presence with her while she
played her ukulele and sang an Elvis song.
The video ends with some photos at
the Veteran’s Cemetery in Higginsville. The inscription on Jim’s stone says
“Rest High on That Mountain.” We scattered some of Jim’s ashes in a spot he
designated in his beloved Rocky Mountains. The photo we chose was one of Jim’s
favorite spots in Rocky Mountain National Park.
Like Whitney, sometimes I feel
Jim’s presence. It makes my heart happy to watch the old videos and to hear his
voice. Jim spent a lot of time treading troubled waters during his lifetime.
Vietnam changed his life when he was young and dementia struck when he should
have had many more years for his dreams to come true. All he really dreamed of
was spending time with family and traveling across country to visit the
mountains and commune with nature. He used to talk to the crows in Moraine
Park, but now he flies with the eagles.
So today was an early “memory day”
for me. The video is different from what it started out to be, but it turned
out exactly as it should have.
Copyright © February
2018 by L.S. Fisher
#ENDALZ
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