I want to tell stories that live on.
I‘m not talking about writing bestsellers and being famous, but about contributing something meaningful on some level to our shared cultural memory. At least a little bit.
When my grandfather, who also was my last grandparent, died very recently, we went through his things and also found a lot of photos. Old photographs of him and my grandmother traveling the world. I saw them in love in Hong Kong and Sweden. I saw how he photographed her trying on different necklaces until on the last shot of those, she had spotted him and was blurry while pointing her finger at him. I saw how he had taken a photo of her asleep in an armchair.
It captured lovely moments.
And I wondered what happens to all our memories and those lovely little photos we tool and postcards we wrote after we‘re gone. Especially, if we don‘t have any children?
They will be thrown into the trash, I think.
This thought really hurt.
When I think of my grandfather, I remember classical music and stories. God, he could tell stories! If you let him talk, he would easily switch back to being the 4-year-old-boy again who fled the Russians barefoot through the snow. That was a risky place to be, because it hurt him terrible and he would explode.
He told me so many of his stories, especially once he knew that I wanted to be a writer. Although I cannot recall all of them in detail, they inspired me. Traveling and keeping every little memory in a box is something I do to. He payed for my violin lessons, which otherwise I would have never taken!
But I also remember my mother telling me about his drinking when she was growing up, and about him losing control and saying hurtful things. Once again, there was this little boy barefoot in the snow, but hidden away in an adult man who probably was not the best father one could wish for.
When he died, we went through those photos and they touched something in me. Seeing the silent generation exploring the world, and witnessing a free Hong Kong in the 1990s I will never see felt like touching history.
And it was touching one of their happy moments, because yes, they look in love and happy.
He and my grandmother, who had been an unmarried teenage mother in the 1960s and was traumatized for live by an assault on her way home from work, during a time when no one spoke about these things.
They were both difficult to handle and difficult for themselves as well.
I kept some of those photos and handed the rest back to my mother, who gave them my uncle.
Who threw the rest into the trash.
I did not know that I had only one chance to save them from being thrown out, and I am still shaking thinking about it.
I could have never thrown them away.
If one day I should have children, I want to take out the few photos I saved and tell them how much they made me the person I am now. How they inspired my stories, how they are the reason I can play music.
The past few days have shown that having children of your own does not mean that anyone wants to keep those memories of you. My uncle threw them away without hesitation.
This makes me want to write even more. I want to write something for them, about them. I am someone who collects every little detail and wants stories to be heard.
That‘s why I work in a museum, I suppose. I want to collect the little things and preserve them for those that come after us.
I need to write something for them. It’s a project for the future. I want to have one project that dives into all of these memories, and all of the emotions I had while looking at those old photos. I will listen to classical music and explore the lives of those two most difficult people I ever knew.
I want those stories to live on.
Mistress witch writes 