Accept it.Īn appreciation for history: Some people just really care about history. Put an avid camera clicker together with someone who really likes their family and what do you get? You get photo album after photo album of family members and friends. They like photos: Dude, some people just really like photos. Photos are an accurate and literal reminder of your loved one. Their smell, voice, and the feeling of their embrace – you wish for them to appear in a dream just so you can remember these things again. Photos are tangible: One of the most difficult things about losing someone is the feeling that their memory is fading. Mankind’s penchant for taking and sharing images is stronger than ever. If you don’t believe me just ask Kodak, Canon, Shutterfly, Instagram, Facebook or Apple. Photos can make you smile, laugh, cry and remember. You know these moments are fleeting and in time our brain will no longer be able to remember them with the same vivid imagery, so you take photos. Photos preserve memories like pre-school graduations, birthday parties, kids posing happily with artistic creations, weddings, etc. Nostalgia and Memories: This is the most common-sense reason and why many people take pictures in the first place. How else would you know you have your great grandmother’s nose or see aunt Carol smiling with her prized roses? Anyway, what was the point of taking photographs of these people if you didn’t plan on looking at them later on down the road? Photos also give future generations a chance to connect with their deceased ancestors and family history. So why shouldn’t they exist in our homes? Whether her photo hangs on the wall has no bearing on her prominence in our family but memories and moments involving her are an important part of our history. She exists in memory and she continues to influence our family to this day. That person is still a part of the family and hiding reminders of them, even if you would prefer to do so, can make other family members feel like their loved one’s memory is being erased.īecause you’re still a family: I have 5 brothers and sisters and, as I’ve said in past posts, we all still consider our mother to be a part of our family.
When someone dies, his or her branch on the family tree doesn’t just fall off.
Why People Hold on to Photos:įor children and/or other family members…like brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, grandsons, and granddaughters. Here are a few, but not all, of those reasons. There are reasons why people hold on to photos and there are reasons why people don’t. It just makes me immensely sad to think of some widow or widower stuffing photos into a box because someone made them feel that leaving photos up is wrong, abnormal, or an indication that they are stuck in their grief. I’m sure this has been a non-issue for many of you, but for others it’s not quite so straightforward. However, I also understand there are plenty of people who prefer not to display photos for perfectly good reasons. I know how I feel – photos are a beautiful and treasured reminder of loved ones who are gone. Whether or not to display photos of deceased loved ones, in my mind, ought to be a benign conversation. When I originally started writing this post I began discussing those who I think are talking about this topic ‘well’ and those whose advice I find downright disturbing, but then I stopped myself because who cares? You’re here and hopefully you trust what we have to say so I’m just going to get right down our thoughts on the matter. I’m not sure if it’s coincidence or trend that’s recently led me to several online articles and posts discussing whether to keep and/or display photos of deceased loved ones.