Near Losses

I almost lost a bit of myself and history this week. Things that define my life, things stored on a technological piece of work call a hard drive, things that I really don’t want to lose or be without. Pictures, music, writings, projects…all neatly stored in virtual folders to be accessed on a whim or whenever needed. I almost lost it all.

I do backup things when I think about it. I have backup copies of pictures dating back to 2002. I don’t have backup copies of my latest pictures, music or writings that have been saved recently. I didn’t take the time to do it like I should have. I know that is a mistake, but it is a mistake I’ll soon not make again. Knowing that these things could have been lost tore at me, made me worry that a big piece of my life was sitting right in front of me, but out of reach. I’m not computer wizard. I do know some things, but how to diagnose a hard drive to rescue vital pieces of information is beyond my scope. That is left to the gurus. The gurus that make the big bucks.

What happened was this: I store all my pictures, music, writings, projects, etc. on an external hard drive. When my computer went belly up, I just unplugged the external hard drive from my computer and connected to my daughter’s computer. Voila! All the information was readily available again. Well, I should have been more careful about where I set the thing in her room. She is a good girl, and I know that it was an accident, but where I had set the hard drive was on top of her computer tower, under her desk, and about knee level from the ground. It was nothing for her little foot to entangle in a wire and pull it off the top of the tower and to the floor. That is what happened. I didn’t think anything had happened, at least it didn’t show any signs of damage. But when I tried to access it, the computer didn’t even recognize that it was connected. I tried everything I could think of to remedy the problem. I unplugged the power cord and plugged it in again. Nothing. I unplugged the USB cable and plugged it in again. Nothing. I began to worry that all was lost. I finally figured out how to open the case of the external hard drive and all the mystery of just what was in there was exposed. It was if the things were magically stored in this box. That is how computer savvy I am. But the mystique was gone when I opened it up…just a hard drive like in your computer, but contained in a little box instead of a big one. I noticed that something was wrong near the area where the USB cable is connected to a green board with all sorts of soldered square and rectangle shaped thingamabobs. One of those doohickeys, something that looks like a soldered piece of plastic no bigger than an open hole between the weave in a piece of Rice Chex cereal was wobbling around. It was so small; I was pushing it around with the pointed end of a needle. It had come loose when the hard drive fell. That was the problem. The computer and hard drive had lost communication because a bridge had been gapped. But had the drive itself been damaged? Had I lost any information or files?

I took the hard drive to my neighbor who has a hard drive enclosure (that’s what I am going to get to put this hard drive into, I sure am!) and he tested it to make sure all my information was still there and that there was no damage to the drive itself. That is when I found out that I lost nothing after all. Relieved? You bet I was.

I didn’t know what I would have done if those pieces of me and my life had disappeared. There was just too much there to replace. It couldn’t be replaced. They had long since been deleted from the media cards from the cameras that took the pictures; some of the music CDs had been sold or lost. My writings? I do have some hard copies, but most are online or elsewhere. They could have been replaced easily enough.

This got me thinking. What about the real life things that matter to me? What if they became lost? What about lost love, lost lives, lost memories? They could never be replaced. Sure, something would step in and try to replace what was lost, but the replacements would never be the same as the originals. That doesn’t mean they would never be as good as the originals, because some things shouldn’t even be compared to what was lost. Lost love: it can be found again. Lost lives: nothing could ever replace that. If something were to happen to one of my kids, there isn’t a copy sitting on some server or CD somewhere. That would be it. Lost memories: not replaceable…new ones can be made, though.

Losing love stinks. It is the hardest thing that I have gone through in a long time. I never wanted to lose it, but it fell between the cracks of time and complacency, lost among the myriads of distractions that consumed the time that should have been spent nurturing and promoting the growth of love.

The ultimate loss is the death of a loved one. I’ve only had a handful of people I love die. One of them was my sister. No one can replace family or friends who are lost in the clutches of death.

Alzheimer’s is a terrible disease. They say that the brain of people with it actually start to die; to atrophy and grow smaller. My neighbor up the road who died recently had Alzheimer’s. His wife said that was the hardest thing she ever had to live through. I can’t imagine watching someone I love and care for go through that. Forgetting loved ones, dates, things that you take for granted each and every day. These things were lost to him, and in essence, to those around him. Sad.

I want to protect those things that are precious to me. I can’t make copies of my children. I can’t store imprints of those I love on a server somewhere. I can’t do anything to keep bad things from happening. I can only try to do my best to protect what is precious to me, and even then, inevitability comes into the picture. What is to be is what is to be. I can’t stop it. I can only do my best to protect, enjoy the time spent with loved ones, and make memories which can be stored in the hard drive of the human body, the brain, for the rest of my life.

Or at least as long as I have a brain that functions as it should. This, hopefully, is forever.