We'll meet again...

My father died when I was 4 years old, consequently I never knew him because my 4 year old memory is a bit foggy. This has caused me anguish in my adult life, especially since I have become a father myself.

A wonderful thing happened at the weekend. I saw my mum and she showed me a newsletter she had recieved from her bank. There was an article about banking during the war*yawn*. In this article there was a picture of servicemen in a Durban bank.
There standing in the middle, looking straight at the camera was my dad.

My sister did some research and found the picture was in a book called 'A bank in battle dress'. Published in 1948, there was my dad sitting on the page without our family ever knowing.

If it wasn't for a bank newsletter posted 57 years later to my mum then the picture would have sat archived in a little read book forever unknown by myself.

I love old photographs anyway. A snapshot of time, frozen and preserved. Immediately after the shutter clicked my father would have carried on his life never knowing that his son would be seeing that glance to the camera in a South African bank nearly 60 years later.

He was 47 when he died, 24 when the picture was taken. I hope his life, from then until his early death, was full of great experiances.. including my birth of course.


I wonder how many photographs of me, you or other relatives there are in crowd scenes published in books somewhere.
In old 19th centuary photos there could be one of your ancestors staring at the camera and you may never know they are related to you.