The 'dinosaur computer' with Alexis Gebhardt (Part I)

A meditation on the difficulties of accessing cherished memories

Alexis Gebhardt is 22 years old and she’s from Orlando, Florida. For her submission to What’s Past is Present, she picked a video she recorded of her father back when she was on the front end of the “I can finally say I’m double digits’ spectrum. Her laughter is somewhat omniscient — she’s giggling at her dad, but never appears in the frame. It’s clear she was excited to be around her dad and recording his existence, however exciting or mundane that may have been in the moment.

But what’s most important about this video is that it’s of Ron Gebhardt, Alexis’ father who passed away when was 13. And what’s more? The original video lives on what Alexis’ family calls the ‘dinosaur’ or 'the Jurassic’ because, according to the familial joke: “it comes from the Jurassic period because it's so massive.”

“It instantly made me cry because it was not something I was expecting to see.” - Alexis on her favorite childhood video

The computer itself is a thick and clunky 2008-ish Dell. That’s where many of her early childhood memories live, but she also has even earlier childhood images that are printed out. And to make matters even more complicated, there are more unseen photos that she has yet to touch:

“There's apparently some box in the attic of my home back in Florida that has so many physical photos and film of both my mom when she was younger [and] also of my dad before I was born. Photos that I’ve seen glimpses of only recently,” she said.

“But there are some photos of my mom and my dad that I have not seen yet. And it's just in that box and it needs to be organized. But ever since my dad died, my mom's never got to organizing it because, you know, single mom and everything.”

What struck me about Alexis’ story is how frustratingly familiar it is. I also lost my dad when I was young and I used to plead with the universe to let me remember everything about him no matter how much I grew up. Obviously, this was not a perfect plan because memory is not reliable and humans love to toss the trinkets of our past that become purportedly useless to us (and maybe we don’t have an extra garage to store all of this).

Alexis and I had a lengthy conversation. Here are the most impactful quotes from our dialogue: (quotes edited for clarity)

Q: How does interacting with memories of your dad make you feel and how do you go about remembering him when you don’t have easily accessible footage of him with you?

A: “The unfortunate part of that is that I don't have a lot of physical memories, like mine that I can remember of my own dad, but at least I can have the photos of him. Those exist. At least there’s something. And then the unfortunate part is one of the few last memories I have of him are of him sick and dying, which are not memories I want to have. So seeing photos of him happy or photos I've never seen before will definitely make me cry. But, it's something that I will cherish.”

Q: Can you describe how you were able to retrieve this video for submission? How are you able to share it with me?

A: “Because of how fragile that computer [the dinosaur] is and how much information it contains, I'm almost scared to go on to it and see just because I'm scared I'm gonna lose it throughout the process. But occasionally, for whatever reason, if I’m needing to use the computer for something, I will take a peek at those folders. But it's not really a family thing. We don't do that together. I've only seen my brother cry like once and that was right after my dad died. I don't know if he's looked at those photos. I don't think he has. I think he would rather not face those emotions, which I understand why. So I don't think he has done that. But I will do it on my own. Actually, it's how I got the video that is my favorite. I was just checking on that computer, my mom had asked me to back it up. And there’s like thousands, so that took nearly a day to backup. So while I was doing that, I was browsing folders and I found a bunch of videos of back when I was like 11 or 12 when I was doing archery and and I found it and it instantly made me cry because it was not something I was expecting to see.”

Q: How do you go about preserving your memories today?

A: “I don't delete anything, because I have no idea. I don't know what's going to be precious to me later. Also, because life is short. But yeah, there's a chance that those even those memories, the ones I'm currently making. are going to be lost to a format because it changes and it's no longer compatible with formats in the future.”

Watch Alexis’ video here:

Stay tuned for Part II of Alexis’ photo and video memory journey in next week’s newsletter.

Tell a loved one you love them - Mimi