This is gonna be a long sad story with a hopeful ending.

So if you all don't know, my mom passed away this year (2018).

It was a struggle for the last two years of her life, as she had become very depressed over the life that she felt was stolen from her.  Without going into too much detail, my dad was extremely abusive verbally.  He only showed love when there was something he wanted.  This was the normal for our family, and mom just went with it.  He acted really nice whenever her friends or family came to visit, and mom and I never told anybody the truth, figuring he was family and we shouldn't bad mouth him.  Then mom got really sick with a rare type of blood infection.  The kind of sick where no one thought she would make it.  And dad dropped all charades during that time.  The doctors all saw how he was behaving and banned him from visitations.  Then one day the police came and took dad away out of the house, never to come back.  He was evaluated and declared mentally ill, he'd stay in a care ward with a guardian, where he remains to this day.  Mom pulled through, was told what happened and it's like the bubble popped.  The illusion was gone and she suddenly realized how he had been treating us all these years.  This put her into deep depression that, combined with her now limited mobility thanks to the infection, made it hard for her to want to get up every day.  She wanted her life back.  So for 2 years I took care of her, tried my best to keep her spirits up and what not.  Then one day she had to go back to the hospital because her body started shutting down.  Three months later, in April, she passed.

Now, I have been going through her things since then.  I found two boxes full of photos mostly recent, though a few of the really old ones from my childhood were in there.  Which actually wasn't right because we used to have WAY more!  Mom kept them in boxes and  in her dresser, which is no longer there.  We had a house fire in 2005 and I suspect  that everything had been destroyed. I only found a few from when we were all kids.Mom and I would always take pics of everyone in my elementary school, during events like Halloween, Christmas, and Camp, where she got to be one of the cabin masters.And I started taking my camera to school with me in Middle School. ALL of those pictures are gone now.
 What really sucks is I had pictures of people who are no longer with us included. friends and neighbors who have passed away. I doubt I'll ever get those back.So I formed this group on FB to help get re-organized and restocked. What surprised me is the number of people who agreed to help by digging through their old photos.  People I haven't seen in years.  It leaves a really good feeling.  Elaina (from my obs ,http://cryinglovers.boardhost.com/viewtopic.php?id=1808)  has contacted me and promised to look through her tons of photos and bring some over.  Right now I have ten people from back in the day in the group.  It's kind of exciting to see what they'll find.  At least some good is coming out of tragedy.

I am DEFINITELY putting all the pictures onto CDs though.  Easier to store, can fit them into my lockbox.