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Executor With a Camera
5 February 2024
Mom had dnamed us as the executor of her will. That means we're charged with dealing with a lifetime of things that remain in the house. More than once, as we go from room to room, we've thought of Emily Dickinson's The Bustle in a House.
A small viewer
We've been using a free app called Encircle to photograph everything in each room. It creates an illustrated PDF report and an Excel spreadsheet file to list the collection and assign value to each piece so the estate can be evenly shared.
There's a lot that has to be thrown out, of course. And there are certainly things that will have new homes.
But there is quite a bit in between.
Take for example the little trinket (shown above), which we found among the cufflink collection. It's small enough (about an inch long) to carry on a keychain.
We didn't know what it was at first but the white plastic on the end was a clue. It diffuses light. Was there a photo inside?
Indeed, the small end held a lens.
We peered through it and found a photo of Dad playing golf. Maybe 50 years ago.
We wanted to show it to our brothers, but how could we share the view through that tiny porthole?
We laboriously lined up the viewer with our iPhone's lens and wiggled around until we got nearly a full frame shot. We might have used the front-facing camera to make alignment easier but we didn't think of that.
Still, what we got was good enough.
Physical objects like this viewer (as we've pointed out before) are not easily shared but photographs of them can be. You can't divide someone's wedding ring, for example, but you'd certainly share photographs of it.
A digital image takes no physical space to speak of and is easily retrievable on rainy afternoons when you feel like reminiscing.
We texted the image to our brothers. Now everybody has seen it.
If it were up to us, we'd photograph everything. But there isn't time. We've just passed our own sell-by date, in fact.
Still, there's nothing like being an executor with a camera. When you find a treasure, you can photograph it and text it to anyone who might appreciate it.
That really beats throwing it out or giving it to just one person who will take it away never to be seen again.