It is hard not to put store in earthly things. My heart is heavy this week.

I am very interested in family history and have done quite a lot of research and my mother and I were talking on the phone a couple of weeks ago when she mentioned a family album that her sister had. I have never seen any photos of my grandmother's family, didn't know that any existed yet alone an album!

The outcome of that conversation was that she would ask her sister (my aunt) who had the album if she could pick out the photos that she thought I would be interested in, send them to me so I can have them scanned and make copies for myself, then return the originals to my aunt.

This album would have had photos of my great grandparents, great uncles & aunts, maybe cousins, possibly even great great grandparents. I'll never know because......

When my mother called her sister, my aunt said to my mother, "don't you remember?" "I asked you several months ago if Anna would like to have this album, because my son, James, doesn't want it, and when I'm gone, it will probably get thrown out. You told me 'Oh, Anna probably won't want any more clutter', so I threw it out."

Why my mother assumed I wouldn't want this album is beyond me! If she thought that, why didn't she think my brother may have liked to have it. Why didn't she want it for herself, it was her mother's family! How could she let my Aunt throw it out!

Anyway, she called me to apologize; she had totally forgotten the earlier conversation with her sister, when she and I were talking about the album recently.

Any time I ask her for information on the family, she will do her best to find out for me, but she sometimes adds "you don't want to go too far back, you have to stop somewhere".

Well, I really haven't got back further than my great great great grandparents on this particular line, and it would have been wonderful to have photos of them and YES! I do want to go that far back and further if I can.

I told my mother that it was OK, and I guess, in so many words, I told her I accepted her apology by saying I can't be upset over something I never saw and never had possession of, but still, it's hard to not feel hurt by my mother's assumption that I wouldn't have wanted this album when she knows of my interest in family history.