Remembered loves and unknown others

(This is a piece of fiction but with many connections to my own life and experience).

Pleased that she’s ahead of herself this year Clara is writing the final cards she needs to post three days before the final posting day. There’s not that many that need a stamp. She’s already sent a few parcels, to destinations both at home and abroad, which all included a card as well as gifts for under the reciprient's Christmas tree. Then there’s the ones she’s hand delivering. Taking all these away there’s less than a dozen left to post. Cards and favourite pen to hand she opens her address book. Ring bound pages (the type that snap on your fingers if you’re not careful) covered by a nasty brown plastic cover it wouldn’t have been her choice but it does the job. Not all the pages are still in the correct alphabetical order and there are scraps of paper contianing friends’ names and addresses and the occasional ‘We’ve Moved House’ card. She never was that much of a filer.

Originally her late partner’s book her own name, address and landline telephone number is the fourth entry on the ‘D’ pages; her details before they’d moved in together. Smiling briefly she passes over the page as there are no other ‘Ds’ she needs the address of. Throughout the book there are other now redundant home details. Some because folk have moved house, evident by the crossings out and new entry (or a card, most usually filed under a wrong letter of the alphabet). Others she no longer needs because over the years the relationships have faded away. No serious fallings out, just colleagues of herself or her husband that she is no longer in contact with or friends of his who she kept in touch with for only a little while after his death. But the entries that give her most pause for thought are the ones of people now dead. Her own parents and brother, her husband’s mother, a few friends. She can’t bring herself to put a line through these. It feels like crossing out her relationship with, and memories of, these friends and family members. She catches a phrase at the edge of her mind: ‘No one is ever dead whilst someone remembers them.’ She thinks that’s it. As the years go on she knows that the numbers of dead (there’s no other word) entries, of people she now connects with through memory alone, will only grow. Sad, so sad. The final card she writes is to an older friend who she hasn’t heard from for a while. She doesn’t have his phone number but occasionally connects with him on Facebook. She hopes he's still around to pick this and other festive mail up from the mat. 

Slightly out of breath having run to get to the post box before the postie Clara fetches a favourite box of old photographs she inherited from her mother. It look a while to find. She’s no filer remember!. A blue box with a flower picture on the front she thinks it once contained posh stationary; most probably a gift to her mum. Not such a common present now when dates are made, thanks given, even condolences sent via text, WhatsApp and messenger. Sipping her last coffee of the day (she never drinks caffeine any later than mid-afternoon) she opens the box which is packed full of photographs;  black and white and colour. There are a few of her parents as children circa 1920s and 1930s and one of her husband’s father (she’s not sure how and when this one got into this box) taken a decade earlier. Even older are the photographs of her dad’s parents as children. She hears her dad in her head. Even though he died more than three decades ago she still chats to and with him regularly. He’s speaking to her mum now; ‘When you’ve finished with that letter writing box you got for your birthday darling can I have it? Just right for keeping the old photos in.’ His handwriting is on the back of most of the photographs. How many hundreds of times has she looked at these images? With one of her parents or on her own. Her brother was never much interested. Her mum and dad’s wedding is pictorially recorded as is their short honeymoon in Bournemouth, her and Joe’s births and early years and a few holidays. All of the family photos have notes on the back; the names dating them as much as the dates themselves; Ida, Eustice, Victor, Edith, Alice, John… The fashions and furnishings also date the images as they turn from black and white to colour. There are a few professional photographs printed on firm card, including a beautiful one of her mum on her 21^st birthday and one of her great grandmother holding her dad. Also in the box are some photos of a family of cousins who emigrated when she was a toddler, and she’s only seen twice since, but whose mum regularly sent cards and pictures back to her sister, for a few years at least. There’s a few other family members and friends represented and a couple of pets too. In the mid-1970s the entries stop. There are other boxes, other albums, some themed, some an equally random collection as those in the blue box.

She’s enjoying, as she always oes, this bitter-sweet trip down memory lane but it’s  the ‘unknowns’ as Clara calls them that prompted her to return to this collection today, after writing her Christmas cards. A couple of photographs of small groups of individuals of different ages (presumably families) and one black and white misty looking image of a baby framed in cream coloured card. Clara has absolutely no idea who these people are and no one left to ask. She'd lingered a while over her brother's and her parents’ details (both written by her husband’s hand) before turning the page of her address book to find the next house number, street and postcode needed for her card writing task.

The emotions engendered by the photographs of the ‘unknowns’ are different to those she felt this morning. She feels no pull of connection, there are no remembered significant moments or fun times but she is curious about ‘David’, she knows no more about the baby, there isn’t even a date on the card. He must be at least in his 50s now. Who and what he is, what are his passions, his worries, his fears, and how many other photographs of him are there out there? Have the other images of him been similarly kept and wondered over or rather classified as rubbish and sent to landfill to rest and rot amongst other less personal discards? She really hopes that David is having a happy life. The ‘family’ photographs give her similar pause for thought. Who are they? How did her parents know them? Did she and Joe ever meet them? Are they as happy as they look or was it all an act for camera; a display of unity for the family album or Christmas round robin letter? She estimates that the children in these photos must be about the same age, give or take a few years, as her. What are they now; solicitors, farmers, environmental activists, Conservative councillors, twitter influencers. Do they have children of their own and who are they? The possibilities are endless. Despite the frustration of the not knowing Clara enjoys where her imagination takes her; the lives she imagines for these people.

She puts the photographs back in the box and rises to close the curtains as the daylight fades. She decides then on a glass of wine with her supper. She’ll raise a glass to all the loved ones, the family, the friends, no longer with her but physically present still in her address book, in photographs and in gifts given and books recommended. She’ll think too of the others, the ‘unknows’; wishing them, and their loved ones, well, wherever they are. And the problem she’s left with, the elephant in the room; what will happen to the address book and the photographs when she goes, when she dies?  For what will the written details and the images mean to her children who will know ever fewer of the people whose details reside in the ugly brown book or the pretty blue box? That, Clara decides, she’ll worry about another day.