Collections and memory

I'm always fascinated to visit the inevitable 'cabinet of curiosities' that older veterans have on display in honor of their time in service.  Some people have lighted cabinets, others have photographs prominently displayed in their front visiting rooms, and yet others have stacks of newspapers and letters filed away. 

As part of the project, I visit with the veteran and always end up exploring this collection through their eyes.  Some collections seem almost sacred, while others might be considered mundane to the untrained observer.  However, items and souvenirs that people keep to express the importance of their experiences explain much about the stories they end up telling later.

My very first interview was a real treat.  The veteran had a stack of newspapers that we explored on video and we went through the emotions that she felt as she viewed photographs and letters she had not considered in a very long time.  She reflected on lifelong friendships as the result of her service and fondly remembered her late husband and resulting career as an army wife.  Even the table we used for the interview had significance for her - she and her husband had acquired it while her husband was on assignment in Germany.  The beautiful and intricate carving was an amazing sight.  More amazing was her portrait in a ballgown made of parachute silk - and she was quite the looker back in the day!  The pictures of her drumming cadence for training soldiers were both striking and progressive considering it was World War II.  She felt her service to be insignificant in comparison to that of the soldiers, but I believe otherwise.

Other collections are much more structured - series of awards, or displays, or books.  Some collections have been turned into novels.  Many pictures are copies of copies, made for visitors and grandchildren alike.  (We all have grubby hands in one way or another.) 

What always breaks my heart a bit is thinking about what will happen to these collections upon the veterans' death.  For many, their children will have to make decisions on what importance certain collections possess. 

One option is to reserve collections for the Veterans History Project, either at the time of interview or to be collected at a later date.  However, the importance of collections, whether physical or intangible, to the interviewee is never to be underestimated.  It is difficult to talk about passing on collections to people who are often reflecting on their experiences anew with the help of the interview.  Those possessions and memories may seem more sacred upon recall. 

I've yet to figure out how to appropriately broach the passing on of collections without seeming like a memory-stealer of sorts - as an aside, this is entirely self-labeling - so I can usually convince a photograph or two to enter the archive but nothing more (though I do leave literature explaining that more can be added at a later date).  Any suggestions, especially without breaching the choice that relatives should make concerning the possessions of their parents instead of a lowly oral historian's coercion?