
Jump ahead a few decades and we see that every year, on the anniversary of Jack’s death, Kate watches this precious video that not only secretly captured her singing an original song, but also captured Jack’s image reflected in her mirror, where she's able to see the pride & love he had for her. In Sunday night’s episode, Kate's VHS tape gets gobbled up by their video player and she quickly freaks out. Thankfully, Toby “knows a guy” who is not only able to splice and repair the tape, but is also able to digitize the memory and upload it to the cloud. At first, Kate is resistant to watching this cherished video “on the cloud” but eventually opens up to it and towards the end of the episode, we see her conveniently viewing this memory on her laptop, never having to fear her tape getting gobbled up again.
Sunday night's "This Is Us" episode tapped in to what makes our photo & video memories so precious to us. Namely, that once we lose a loved one, those photos & videos we have of them serve a powerful role in keeping their memory alive. If we're talking about printed photos, they allow us to see our loved one and remember what they looked like forever. Even better are the videos we have of them; they allow us to HEAR them, to remember their voices, to see their expressions in action and remember exactly who they were on this planet.
This is why it is imperative to back up and protect all the memories you hold in your home. It's all too easy to forget to replace the batteries in our smoke detectors, as Jack did for months, have a hard drive crash, a video player eat your tape, or have a pipe burst and flood the basement where you store your photo albums. In the case of natural disasters, photo memories are almost always the first possession you see victims searching for amid the destruction. With this in mind, it is recommended that all memories be backed up in three different locations. One could be a fire-proof safe in your own home. One could be in the cloud that resides on a server in a different geographical location to you. Another could be in a bank deposit box or even a neighbor’s house. This way, you’ll be covered in a variety of situations and won’t be devastated to have lost the possessions most precious to you. Your treasured family memories.
If this is something you've had on your to-do list for a while now, I encourage you to take the first step TODAY towards protecting your memories. It's a task you'll never regret doing. I promise you!