In autumn there will be a year since my grandma passed, just a couple of days after I called her and cheerfully wished her Happy Birthday…

She had a long and eventful life, managed to be a citizen of several countries even not leaving her hometown, and her parents lived in an Austro-Hungarian empire!! How much she knew… How much she saw… And how many things she could tell me if I only asked!

But it always seemed to me that I have enough time. That right now I have to do this and that, solve these problems and answer that call and then, when I’ll come to her place next time, I’ll definitely ask her about everything! How wrong I was(

I know that she fried the most delicious chop in the world, but I don’t know how. I know that she made real miracles when she sat down at a sewing machine or a needlework, but I never learned from her how she managed to do so. In fact, this is a very unpleasant feeling: to understand that irrevocably and because of your own stupidity you’ve missed something really important, something that you can never get back…

Of course, I gathered all the photographs we had, scanned them and even my grandmother’s school papers were found!! There was even a VHS cassette with my grandparents’ wedding anniversary recorded! But it’s not enough, it is like slivers. And there could be a whole tree if I just started putting together everything related to our family years ago.

Now I understand how important it is to keep everything that relates to your family. Today it seems that you will never forget this day or that party. But time passes and you are surprised to find out that you don’t remember who was there, what you were talking about and how the birthday cake looked like.

Now I collect everything. I don’t want my children to sit above the photographs like I did almost a year ago. I don’t want them to understand how much they did not ask their mom. I want them to know, see and hear everything. I want to tell them everything on my own, in a way I think and how I feel. Then no one can tell them what kind of person their mother was, they will know and understand everything themselves.

Having started collecting all the photos, videos and even audio files (yes, we started arranging family interviews, it turned out to be very fun, interesting and entertaining), I’ve suddenly realized how much space it takes. And over time, there will only be more and more data! And I already need to think where to store it.

Store on disk on my computer is not an option, it’s too heavy and unsafe. Google Disk is much better, but not exactly what I need either. Six months ago, our project’s photos disappeared, or it would be better to say there was no access to an important folder, I do not want to repeat those circles of hell and communication with tech support until we finally got back our data.

Now I keep an eye on Bank of Memories. Here you can store all your digital data and as occurred make digital monuments to those who are gone. (yes, I still have an intention to get together everything I know and remember about my grandmother). I like that there is no one server where everything is stored. Instead they have servers scattered in different places. It is a great level of data safe storage. And blockchain technology in which Bank of Memories is based on is considered the most reliable in the world. So I will try to use it and I’m waiting for a full release. I hope it will be soon.