I remember our photo albums from when we were little and how my older sisters and my mother took extra care of them. We never had a chance to restore and get soft copies for those even just by taking photo of the ones compiled in albums. We lost years of memories along with the albums that got ruined over time.
If you had to get out of the house quickly, because of the fire or flood! What would you take with you? The most precious things, such as memories (photos), everything else can be replaced!
Oh no it wasn't fire or flood. But the photos eventually got wet and got ruined from moisture or from low quality of plastic in the albums. 😞 It was too late to salvage the photos. We managed to retrieve a few but most of them were gone.
I said "If", this was just hypothetical speech :) I know this is horrible, like you lost part of your life. I use photoshop about 5 years and I made some restorations of old photos, very damaged photo, but there is always some where you can't do anything...