Whose Memories?
“Here are some things Dad brought back from moving Grandma,” my mother said, as she placed a box on my dining table. It was filled with objects from my grandmother’s apartment. My father and aunt had just spent a week relocating their mother to a memory care facility and, having little time and many items to sort, had culled out a few things that they thought might be meaningful to me.
I looked through the box. It contained primarily framed photos, most of which were of my growing family in recent years: pictures and holiday cards I’d sent to keep her connected from a distance. Why did he give these back to me, I wondered. What am I supposed to do with them? They were intended for her; they could serve the same purpose even if she was now in memory care.