This is the fourth in a series about creating photo (and other) books to help you, your family, and future caregivers focus on the richness and significance of your life -- instead of primarily on infirmities you might develop.

Whenever I speak – at book signings, retirement community events, etc. – I always conclude by passing around copies of photo books I have made. These professionally-printed volumes include pictures and text, and capture everything from a family event that lasted a few hours or days to an entire era. The one that typically evokes the most comments depicts the first ten years of my life. (The book opens with a scanned copy of a telephone message slip my father received in the waiting room at the hospital. The doctor had called down to the reception desk to leave the message, telling my father that I had been born.)

I think that my audiences find that book striking because it includes so many reminders of life more than half a century ago. For example, the total hospital bill for my mother’s and my five-day stay when I was born (a scanned copy of which appears in the photo book) was $154.70 – that’s not the co-pay, that’s the total bill. As another example, the book includes a story about my routinely creeping down the stairs to the living room in the middle of the night at the age of three and watching the test pattern on the television. (In that era, television stations did not broadcast 24 hours a day. They signed off late at night after playing the Star-Spangled Banner. Then they projected a test pattern until they returned to the air with the daily farm report very early the next morning.)

Audience members say things like, “We don’t know much of anything about my father’s life. Now he’s gone. How I would love to have a book like this about him!”

I know how they feel. My parents were not storytellers. My father did not tell us a single story about his life growing up. My mother told a small handful. Curiously, they all involved health and health care. For example, she got into trouble in kindergarten for refusing to hold hands with the children on either side of her in a circle – her mother had forbidden it, saying that she would pick up germs if she did so. As another example, when she went outside to play with her little brother in tow, her mother always exclaimed, “I don’t want to see either of you coming back here with any broken bones! We can’t afford the doctor bills!”

To everyone who wishes that they had photo books about their parents and grandparents, I say, “It starts with you. If you don’t have the knowledge or pictures to create such books about your parents and grandparents, then start with your own life. Create such books about you, so that one day your children are not saying, ‘We don’t know much of anything about my mother’s life. How I would love to have a book like this about her!’”

Some people have said to me things like, “I don’t have anything. All our family pictures and things like that were lost when some boxes they were stored in were stolen.” Or they were lost in a move, or damaged so badly in a flood that they had to be thrown out. Or their parents just didn’t save pictures and other mementos. Or buying film and getting it developed decades ago cost so much that their family didn’t take many pictures in the first place.

To people who have experienced such losses of family history, I say again, “Start today. Whatever you put together, even if you just start with pictures and stories from today forward, will be so much more than you and your children and grandchildren will have if you don’t put anything together.” And such photo books can help your family remember and honor who you are as you get older. Thus, they can help connect the generations and refocus attention on your role in the family and your value as a human being, and not simply on health issues that might arise.