I have returned to sorting family photographs. There are too many for my comfort. Stashed in a half-sorted manner in a combination of crates and boxes, they snag at my mind burdensomely. A task not completed. A mess unsorted. A treasure which cannot be enjoyed. Not, as they are, even useful. Browsing through a handful can be intensely pleasurable, but there is no order to the memories and they suddenly become indigestible. Like an over-rich meal, and all the courses on one plate.

The problem is exacerbated by two things. One is the bounty of my heritage: as well as my own, I have photographs inherited from a great-aunt and from my mum. And when it comes to photographs of the children, there are lots of duplicates. Because we never lived fewer than 200 miles away from my parents, I often got two sets developed and sent one to mum; she reciprocated. I now have them all.  What this confirms for me is just how loved my children were, the affection and interest that I was able to assume in my parents without question, how supported we were, even at a distance. But, on a practical level, it makes things harder. You know that moment of mental overload where you lose discrimination and feel as if you have gone round in circles, because it seems as if you are just staring at the same thing over again? It actually happens.

The second problem is trickier. I really struggle to look at some of the photos. I have a mild phobia. So this sorting, this winnowing, this distillation is a deliberate challenge, and, I hope, a therapeutic one that I have set myself. Mixed within the messy piles of pictures from the past are things I really don’t want to look at. Keeping the photographs unsorted, artificially increased by duplications – these are great strategies to procrastinate, avoid, avert my eyes. It won’t do. 

As I observed to a good friend yesterday, I love living a metaphor. In this instance, I am embracing it consciously and hoping for both practical and internal benefits. Often feelings are too swift – they flee into hiding, escalate or tangle themselves up between one breath and the next. I believe it will help to interweave them with a practical task with visible outcomes. It reminds me of sorting through someone’s belongings after a bereavement. Keeping oneself busy while one grieves, using physical items to connect and reflect, and hoping that completion will also bring an emotional consummation.  Release. 

Photographs are not the actual past. They show things we chose to document; they are prompts to memory and each viewing is a fresh recollection. How often, within a family, does someone look at a photograph and put the image in a context of past difficulties overcome, future disasters unanticipated, sometimes the secrets hiding in plain sight? Throwing out a photograph does not negate what happened. But I believe I have the right to be selective. 

I realise, as I write, just how much power and autonomy I am assuming for myself and how exciting this is for someone who has habitually defined my choices in terms of responsibility. I’ve not gone completely rogue: I’ve told my family what I am doing. If they are concerned that I will discard something that matters to them, there is space for them to come and claim it. Otherwise, and I think this is the case, they can trust me, and trust my judgement and accept that my choices, which will not be identical to theirs, will result in something they can also live with.

Wandering through Wikipedia, through entries on “selective memory” and dipping into the dangers of “repressed memory,” I came across “rosy retrospection.” This is the trick of recalling the past more positively than it was experienced. Of course it is a cognitive bias, but it is one that results in increased self-esteem and well-being so, on a personal level, maybe it’s a jolly good technique. 

What I seek is not to deny the past but to make my peace with it. I’ll look at all the photographs, nothing hidden while I do. But then I don’t have to dwell on the ones I dislike. I can choose which images to keep and the past I want to be reminded of. There are so many gorgeous moments in there. I am determined to be able to enjoy them.