Memento Mori - The Last Photograph

I stood at the edge of the concrete wall of the waste facility, the tip, the huge metal waste container sat below. I had emptied the back of the pickup of the last of the possessions, an old cabinet and broken down wardrobe, the last of what had been left in David’s house. Now I stood with the final item; a photo in a frame of a young lady taken long ago. It had been meant to go to the final resting place but had ended up left in the house and then somehow in a box in the back of my truck. The last item of love from David’s life, a photo in a frame of David’s mother, the last matriarch of a line of lives lived all the way through the time of man, linked to everyone and no one, now at life’s end. I tried to throw the picture & frame away but couldn’t, guilt, sadness, respect & remorse stopped me, back to the truck it went into an empty box on the back seat.

David a dear family friend had died only weeks earlier, he was an elderly man in his 80’s when he passed. A heart attack after breakfast he sitting in his favourite chair in the living room of his home, the same family home he had lived his life from beginning to end. David was a quiet man, with a gentle grace about him, cut from the old school cloth of working class decency. I didn’t know him well but I could see he was kind, he had been a lifelong mentor & friend to my wife, her sister and mother and a dear friend to their family matriarch, my wife’s late great grandmother, so he had respect from me. He had never married and never had children, my wife’s family unit had been the closest thing to family that David knew and now he was gone.

I drove back home from the tip once again with the picture, as people do in grief it’s hard to let go of belongings and mementos of the dearly departed as it feels like a betrayal of the person passed to get rid of their things. The possessions and items that hold regard and meaning to them and those closest to them, in his passing the items he had collected and cherished over a lifetime of living, memories of his time in history had now become our responsibility to resolve.

It could have, should have all gone to a museum we discussed, his collection not junk but items of history, artifacts and mementos specific to David’s and his parents lifetimes spanning either side of the 20th Century, but as with many things beauty and meaning is found only in the eye of the beholder. So they had gifted what they could and sold some items, the little trinkets & mementos gathered over a lifetime have no real meaning or significance to others unless linked by common interest, historical rarity or value so had been stored and collected with no one really knowing what to do with them. Over the weeks after David had died, our house had become a mecca to David’s belongings, furniture, keepsakes, memories in belongings and the photo was now another item of the memory of David’s life to find its way home to us.

A month or so after David was laid to rest we had begun redecorating at home and the clear out of the relics to David began, time easing the grip on these items and allowing an acceptance of removal of these newly inherited things to pass once more, although we held on to many. So as we began to decorate, over time, I had found myself reloading these newly inherited items back to the pick-up and heading back to the tip where I would find myself once again at the skip side with photo frame in hand. I stood at the edge of the container looking at a young image of David’s dear departed mother from long ago. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t throw it away. Back to the back seat it went. This time the photo didn’t go back home, it stayed with me in the car and every day after it went with me to and from work the photo came to, for another week and another then another. The image of this lady captured in a moment frozen in time, a stranger to me and me a stranger to her, yet now I possessed this intimate loving portrait of her taken all that time ago.

As the home decorating project moved from one room to another once again I found myself at the tip, more decorating waste loaded, I stood again in the place I had weeks earlier with the same dilemma, the photo in hand and still I couldn’t part with it and it returned once more to the back to the car with me. This would happen at least one more time. It just felt bad, guilty to be throwing the memory of someone away. Every time I went to the back seat I would see the photo looking back at me and would reason that it’s just a photo like a billion others and it’s no problem to throw it away. At home we had photos of our own Grandparents, Great Grandparents, Great Great Grandparent that we would keep and pass down to our own children and grandchildren and their children, until the photos become those of strangers as the photo of this young woman was to me.

For the final time after travelling with me for weeks in the back seat I was once again at the tip, decorating finished and onto the next project, the photo with me in hand again. I had decided to do it and this time I let it go; I laid it down onto the pile of rubbish brimming full in the huge skip amongst a mass of other home goods, I looked one last time at the photo and waked away as an unsympathetic continuous line of people unaware of my concern continued to load old belongings and items on to the pile until the photo was visible no more, gone forever.

Returning to the car and driving away I felt relieved that the photo was gone, the release of burden a welcome respite. Yet as I drove away that day and for weeks after the photo kept coming back into my mind. Why was it so pulling on my conscience? It was just a photo ultimately an item like all others destined to perish, I could of given it a movie style send of, romantically burned in a campfire but I don’t think that was the issue.

I thought of it often and reasoned that the great difficulty I was feeling was the end of the chain of life. The end of David’s lineage, it was that which had weighed on my mind and that which was reflected in meaning within the photo, disposing of the photo was throwing away the last memory of David’s mother from the World. She had once lived and died, then survived in the memory and heart, alive in David. In his passing and with no living relatives the life was gone, the chain was broken, the second of two deaths and with no other living relatives the final death. The Young woman captured in time had been a stranger to my wife and me, a stranger genetically and emotionally. We could have kept the photo as a token to David but that was not our duty to carry.

I reflect now on the image and of the belongings which David kept, relics of the past, not a hoarder by any means but a collector of antiquity brought up before the throwaway culture of Modern Man. Reflections of a different time when clothing and goods had worth, all including the photo were rare commodities made by hand, carefully considered before purchase in a time when money was hard earned and rarer still, a time when things were made to last far beyond one user, designed for a lifetime.

David a guardian, of selective pieces in history which held significance to his life and memory as they happened, newspaper cuttings, stamps, utensils, tools, letters, photos, furniture in the absence of a wife and children these items had gathered an emotional meaning to David, as objects and items do to everyone. They, the reflection of a life lived, the memory of a happy time. The memory of a happy place, David as a boy with his loving mother and father in his modest family home as he passed through the milestones of modern life, school, then college, an unwanted stint of national service and then work, all the while returning to his base, his house not broken or damaged but a good place, a happy place filled with love, a place where David was home, where he belonged, safe and secure and loved by his parents as he loved them. They leaving this life long before him, his loving parent his dearest companions. Saddening to the heart a time & place, like all time, that which cannot be kept stationary nor held onto eternally, no matter how we try, we, our loved ones, family and friends all in motion every moment on the river of time, journeymen of life, of the human condition.

The house of David sat empty as the door was closed and locked for that the last time as he was laid to rest. His life complete at a natural end 80 years slightly over, a life fully lived and memories gone from the world except the signs and echoes of them left in belongings, the belongings never as rich to own as the love of another. As the door to the house is opened once again and new people move in and settle, perhaps building a family of their own in time maybe having a boy named David, all unaware of the lifetimes lived in the house before them, the love and memories gone but re lived once again by the new occupants as the cycle of life continues.

All of that was reflected to me in that, the last photograph.