The Christmas Photo Cards project

I did something very interesting this past week which unraveled a new project that took me down a a very bittersweet memory lane. I decided to purge my Christmas photos to create a gift for Marcia. It's a 4 decade friendship. So there was the idea...gather all the Christmas photos she sent me through out the years and hang them on this small iron desktop photo tree.She loved her birthday gift and all who were at her birthday celebration loved thumbing through the photos laughing at the outdated hairstyles, and the outfits and the stories behind every picture. But my Christmas photo books were left with huge gaps and that wasn't going to fly for me. Tonight I sat at my kitchen table and moved the photos so that each page was filled.The memories all came flooding back. There before my eyes were changes and many of them sad, and many of them funny. I saw families who are now divorced and wondered what did happen. What was going on behind those fixed smiles in those photos? I saw families who I don't see anymore and I wonder why. I saw new babies and the families grow each year as they continued to send their Christmas greeting cards with their photos in them. I saw people who passed on and are no longer with Me, some way too young to be gone and some who were in my life since I was a child. It was sad to see them and I missed them all over again.Some of the photos had the letter on the back of them and so I read what I could-as many of the cards had to be cropped in order to fit in my Christmas Photo Books, I saw bits and pieces of the stories, and knew first hand as much as the writer made it sound like everything was okay, I knew personally the year really was pure hell for them. This project has affected me tonight.Good? Bad? I am not sure. I loved that I was included in their Christmas card list, I loved seeing the kids growing and the husbands looking irritated with thiose "really this pose is lame" faces on,I feel sad that some of the families are not together anymore, but then again, we are weeks away from Christmas and the photos will start arriving in my mailbox and I will warmly collect them again, and add them to my new Christmas Photo book I have to begin filling...so I wonder what will I write in my Christmas letter this year and what photo will I decide to use to update my friends and families with, I guess it really doesn't matter. I guess what matters is just sharing our lives with each other no matter what the story is .