Memories And Mementos

I realized – okay, I admit it- mostly from the tv and newspaper ads and articles- that tomorrow is mother's day. And I thought I would put up a commemorative photo of my mother. Preferably with me as an infant or a toddler. That’s when the next realization struck… no such photograph exists. 

It really made me feel sorry for myself. How could she do that? I have numerous photos of myself with my daughters at every stage of their lives. Okay, so cameras were rarer and the film was expensive, but not one? not a single snap of me at my brother's “munja” or my sister's wedding? I make occasional cameo appearances on subsequent family celebrations, but clearly I was not one of the major players.

Then I got thinking about the whole memories vs mementos thing. I certainly have many memories of spending time with my parents, so are the mementos just to exhibit to the world? Why would the world care? Is it to remind myself how much they cared for me? Or how they or I looked? And now that I find there are no photos it proves what? 

I lost a lot of photos on my phone when the memory card got infected. Among those was the last photo I took with my parents. Now it's gone. I picked my grandfather's “gita” and shaving box to remember him by. The years corroded them until I finally threw away the tatters last year. I have my father's woolen cap knitted by my mother. I have a load of badly damaged black and white photos of my family. Grandparents, parents, aunts, and uncles, mostly with older siblings or cousins. I hang on to these things, even as I know that there is no meaning to be found in them. I don’t need to look at them to remember the beloved ones I have lost. 

When my mother passed on last year, I took on the responsibility of clearing out her closet. There were more photos. There were legal and financial papers. There were her sarees and a few trinkets. There were her books. I kept a few of her sarees and the trinkets. Perhaps the sarees will make quilts for my grandchildren someday. The other clothes were distributed amongst the maids. There were no takers for her books. 

Some years ago, when she moved out of her own home to live with my brother, my mother put fire to her degrees, medals, and threw away her numerous cups and certificates. I was very upset because I was so proud of her achievements. But she said it was not something she did in a fit of depression, but a decision she’d made long back. She said she was never going to have to prove she had done any of those things in the future, so she got rid of them, or we would have to do it later.

Now I know what she meant. Today's souvenirs are tomorrow's junk. My children don’t even know half the people in my old photos. With the ones they do know they have their own memories, and their own photos too. Now technology makes it unnecessary for them to try and preserve them in physical albums. Sometimes I wonder if they will even have time to take down those thousands of photos from the cloud. But that is for them to decide. 

For now, I just have to post a more recent picture with my mother. Or maybe I don’t have to do anything. I will think about it tomorrow.