Momento

After so much time passing, I finally faced the 'what to do with these photos' question.

Do I keep all the photos I have taken over the years of his family?  Do I keep the wedding photos, do I keep all the family happy snaps and what about all the photos of the niece's and nephews that aren't mine anymore.  How about the holiday snaps that we took together, do I still keep them?  Then there is the photos where he is with my family and the very rare photo of me and him together.  

These are snip-its of my life, people I have known, things that I have done, places I have been.....  do I delegate them to the dark corners of my memory only and delete the visual cues that will one day bring those memories back?

Then there are the questions about what to do with old presents, jewellery (i.e. the engagement ring) and pretty much anything he might have touched or might remind me of him. What do I do then?

There are of course some things I can't get rid of (like the cat) and things that are out of my control to stop being hit over the head with an old memory (like the other day hearing an old song that we use to say I love you to when ever it played),  I'm just have to keep working on not give them the freedom to dance around for too long inside my head.

As to the things I can get rid of,  I have started to ask myself about the significance of the object (or photo) and why am I keeping it.  I deleted ever last single photo I had of him on his own,  the only one's that remain are the ones I wanted to keep not because of him, but because of me.  

I kept the photo of us at his graduation, mainly because I have so very few photos of me at that stage of my life (and I have blue hair!!! haha).  I kept my holiday snaps but deleted every last one that he was in.   When it came to his family, I simply asked myself what I would want him to do if he still had any photos of my family.  I'd want him to delete them, I don't think it's right to keep photos of each others families - even if we are in the photos our selves.   I wish we had of talked about that side of things as I really makes me uncomfortable to think that he still has photos of my nieces and nephew.   So of course given how I felt, I deleted all the photos I had of his family.  

Lucky enough when it came to photos of him with my family,  it turned out that decision was easy.  Most of the photos weren't important or significant, so they where easy to delete.  After all they  (my nieces and nephew) don't need to have any reminders of him, I really doubt in a few years time they will even remember him at all.  In a small way it is lucky that they live so far away as they never really spent that much time with him, so he never got to make any lasting impressions on them.  

It's only the lasting impressions he left on me that I have to worry about.

but I am extremely confident that ....  this too shall pass