In the last few months I have had the unenviable task of working through a huge pile of old family photographs and items that needed to be either kept or thrown away.
Anyone who has ever been in this position knows how the responsibility can weigh heavily. This can be extra difficult when you are downsizing and there is the need to cull as much as possible. It can be an emotional ride that can at times feel like a burden. I have two sisters but as they live over a hundred miles away a lot of the decisions on it needed to be left to me.
There were several occasions when I would start then put it away for a few days. There were one or two periods when I would just lie down on the floor surrounded by it all. Other times I would make an excuse that something more pressing would need doing such as cleaning the bathroom/kitchen/loft or reading the complete works of Charles Dickens. In short, any excuse I could find to put off the decision.
But with the clock ticking on leaving my old house I simply had to get on with it. I was quite ruthless on items but on photographs I largely avoided the decision. Also on paperwork that I didn’t even realise we had, such as letters to my grandmother from the Admiralty in late 1943 saying my Grandfather was missing from a ship that had been hit by a German air-attack, followed by another short letter in early 1944 saying he was now presumed dead.
These are life-shattering pieces of correspondence. But it was also over 80 years ago, is there any point in keeping these as all those directly affected have now passed away? And what about the letters from my grandfather sent months before when he had been on a different ship altogether, planning their life together once he got home?
Also birth certificates, marriage certificates. For me these are not things that can comfortably just be placed into recycling. But if I didn’t deal with it then, is it just kicking it down the road for someone else to deal with later?
I imagine many of you have been faced with the same dilemma.
I must confess, in regards to the paperwork, I have kept them. In contrast to how I found them, I’ve put them all together in one place. It could be that sometime in the future I simply let them go.
As for the photographs, I’m systematically having them copied online by a local photo printer and I’m storing them on my desktop. At some point I may also let the originals go.
But a way I dealt with the pressures of the process was by picking up my guitar and writing a song about it. As the weeks went by I refined the song which I titled, quite concisely I suppose, ‘Looking Through The Past’. The song was put out on streaming platforms on March 20th and so far has been well received.
To accompany the song came a lyric video. To construct this I found short pieces of film from online video archives that I could use and felt reflected the tone of the track, but interspersed these with many of the photographs that I was sorting through.
Most of the photographs were taken with my father’s beloved Agfa Isolette camera he bought in a camera shop in Hong Kong in 1956 or ’57. He used the camera to take photos of my mother and of myself from just a day or two after being born and the weeks ahead. It is a beautiful camera that accompanied us all through the next couple of decades on seemingly every family occasions and holiday.
So now many of the photographs I agonised over are on a video on You Tube and will be widely seen. I have only just begun to promote the video but I will use it as intended, as a promotional tool for the song but also as a way of honouring the memories of those who have meant so much to us.
This year, indeed this month, is the fiftieth anniversary of my mother passing away and more than anything, this is, I hope, a fitting tribute to her. The song was released on her birthday.
So it’s nice to know that something that felt so difficult and was emotionally such a strain, has been turned into something positive.
If you would like to take a look at the video, here it is:
SONGS AND SCRIPTS AND DUNKING BISCUITS 
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