By Sandra L. Graves, Ph.D., ATR
A friend of mine died recently. He was related to a person once dear to me but with whom I no longer have a close relationship. I was completing a project, which necessitated a lengthy sorting through years of accumulated photographs. I didn't know I had recorded so many events in my life! Obviously, pictures of significance to me were plentiful. I ended up spending an entire day with my memories, replaying the joys and special times which prompted the pictures. Many people in my album are no longer alive or have long since moved out of my life, and I rarely connect with them at all. The experience of spending a day reviewing my life was truly a gift. I want to share with you what I discovered so you may one day make the choice to spend this kind of time with yourself and the physical memorial of those who are no longer with you.
How much of our daily lives do we actually remember, much less think about? As time is crowded with each minute's task and the minutes become an unending string of forgotten events, we usually have little appreciation for what we put into life and what life has given us. I was struck by how full my life has been. I smiled and I cried. I felt the pain of each loss once again but was amazed to reference my feelings now with the recent death of my friend to those I remember experiencing in the past. My memory of how it felt to grieve when the death was new, when I still could not accept the reality, was very different than what I am currently feeling. The "professor", "counselor" part of me recalled a study that was done a few years ago of widows. The researcher interviewed women whose husbands had just died and women who had been widowed a number of years. They all completed a grief scale which rated the severity of the various experiences. Those who had been widowed longer were to complete the scale as they remembered feeling a few months after their husband's death. The results were not surprising and certainly reinforced my understanding of the human spirit and capacity to grow through grief. The widows had forgotten the extent of their early pain! I believe this is true for all of us, regardless of the relationship of the loved one who died – child, brother, husband, fiancé or friend.
The other thing I rediscovered was how similar the grief over a broken relationship (engagement, divorce or long-standing significant other) is to the grief from a death and how disenfranchised we can become by "ranking" our losses. There is an assumption that one type of death is worse than another (and in some cases this is true), or that one type of loss is worse than another when the relationship is dead but the person is still alive. The reality is that we will more than likely attend the funeral of an ex-husband, wife or significant other, and the feelings can become confusing. No one quite knows what to say in these "blended" situations, so little is said. I found myself, for example, grieving many losses at my friend's funeral, including my previous role in that family, the presence of the person I was once close to as well as the untimely death of his brother, a young man in his forties. I wanted to stay and I wanted to run away from it. I knew all this was normal, but that didn't make it feel any better.
Now, back to the photographs. I began to sort the pictures chronologically and according to reasons I had taken them in the first place (Christmas, birthdays, vacations, etc.). This ritual began to take on a meaning of its own. I was not only reliving the events to the best of my recall, but I was gathering gratitude with my grief. I was happy I had the pictures of the smiling face, the children on water-skis, the Christmas packages around the living room, the Thanksgiving dinner, the changes in hair color and clothing sizes! Then I began to see a pattern in what I had found important throughout my life. Those pictures represent values of family, faith, relationships. I didn't remember the "things" we gave each other for
Christmas, but the fact that our home looked beautiful in its seasonal décor and that we all were together! Then I became sad at what I had lost – the events that would never be recorded again. But, as I found myself projecting into the future, I realized that I was covering some anger. Then I began to remember the events which were not so pleasant – the reasons why two people grow apart. I burst out laughing when I recognized that something very basic was missing from my photo journey – no one ever stopped in the middle of an argument and took a picture. When I was so weary or in despair, I never once asked anyone to get the camera and record those moments! And then I remembered the difference between grieving death and grieving other separations. The memories preserved in pictures and videos which spark our reminiscing are usually those which help to enhance, enshrine, entertain – those heroic, courageous, outrageously funny or touching moments. When that loved one has died, we resist any other type of memory for a good, long while. When that loved one has detached from your life, but is still alive, we resist the good memories. Imagine the confusion of combining these two resistances! It can be overwhelming to have several different feelings at the same time – and that is certainly what my photo journey is doing. I truly empathized, once again, with my patients and companions who have suffered multiple losses and are wary of the photo albums or videotapes. Here is what I learned that I am suggesting to you – when you feel ready I want you to try it:
1. / Gather all the pictures you have stored in all the various places you have stored them. Choose a day when you have nothing else to do (or something you can readily give up doing). If you are one of those wonderfully organized people who label pictures and put them in albums, go through an album and see how you have grouped your pictures.2. / Sort the pictures into special events, putting all the holiday pictures together, all the birthday pictures together, etc.
3. / Arrange each event in chronological order, from the most recent to the earlier years.
4. / There are many ways to preserve your memories. The most common should be to put them into the traditional album. On the front of the album, make a cover of some kind, such as "Christmas Past" (to steal a bit from Dickens). Then annotate each page (or event) with your worst memory of that day and the best of that day. I did mine by recording feelings – mad, sad, scared or glad. Since these are my memories and my perceptions, it doesn't matter how "accurate" they are. I found myself having some trouble with honesty while I was doing this – I wanted to have been more angry at times to justify some outcomes or couldn't remember the "bad" parts of the day. This was particularly true the further the years were from today. I, therefore, really had to focus and accept that my feelings about yesterday are definitely communicating to me exactly how I am at this moment. I also had to remind myself that this is okay and accept me as I am today. When I look at these same photos in a few months or next year, I know I will be perceiving differently. I can add my new feelings to the album then. This knowledge continues to build my trust in the process of loving, grieving and living.
5. / Lastly, collect select pictures of yourself, since you were a baby to the most recent. Try to select pictures taken only of you with no one else in it. Make up a separate album about you. Appreciate yourself, where you have been. Your identity is partly all the events that have meaning to you and that you have reviewed in pictures. But remember, you are the hero of your own tale. It can be remarkably therapeutic not only to see yourself, to affirm who you are as a person in a constant state of change who has become the person you are today, but also with the deep understanding that this process of change and growth is eternal.
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