Out of the picture

Isn’t it interesting the way each of us deals with grief in sometimes polarising ways. A relative, whose husband died several years ago in circumstances very similar to mine, filled her living room with pictures of him, including one taken on their last holiday together.  She says she found comfort from being surrounded by all those happy smiling images. I can hardly bear to look at pictures of my husband.

I haven’t taken down any that were already around, but nor have I added any new ones. My eyes deliberately skate over the pictures hanging on the wall or propped on the mantelpiece. The one by my bedside – an old one of us together taken 30 years ago, before we were married, and after a dinner at a quaint (and expensive) Scottish coastal seafood restaurant paid for by my late father-in-law, (which was very generous of him because I remember my husband choosing the most expensive thing on the menu!) – is pushed to the back of the table making it difficult to chance upon it when the alarm goes off in the morning.  

As for more recent images, I have one of both of us taken on the day he died. I’ve had a print made of it because in it he looks happy, we both do. We were having a lovely day out by the sea. But I can’t look at it for more than a split second, so it’s in an envelope, somewhere.

Why is that I can’t find the comfort in pictures that my relative does? Especially as I LOVE family photographs, have albums of them and spend hours pouring over them, looking into the faces of those pictured.  Is it because the only reason I’d be looking at the images of my husband, finding that comfort, is because the real person isn’t here?

It reminds me of an event shortly after my husband died. His work colleagues had very generously organised an evening to celebrate him. He was a university lecturer, so this grand hall was packed with students and work colleagues, all sampling whisky – his favourite tipple – and Scottish cheese, and chatting, sharing stories, laughing. Playing on a big screen in the background was a loop of pictures and short videos of him on field trips, at general department get-togethers or on graduation day with his students and their families – my husband was a phd Dr so wore the rather unflattering ‘cushion’ hat to graduation complete with relevant robes and full dress kilt so he was always in a lot of souvenir photographs!  As I was watching the film I was generally thinking what a character he was and how loved he was by the university community. Then suddenly I was struck by the fact that the only reason I was watching this film, looking at these pictures, recalling these memories was because he was dead. I felt as though I’d been smacked in the face.

The evening was a wonderful idea and I am grateful beyond words that it was held because it WAS comforting for me to know that my husband had been remembered in this way, and it’s important for everyone to grieve and to celebrate in equal measure.  

But, for me, while images on a screen, in a photo album or in a frame on the wall are, yes, colourful souvenirs of happy, fun or important moments from the past, they’re also a stark reminder of what’s been lost. While that person is still alive, I can accept times gone by because there’s a future with and for them. Or if they’re an older relative, there’s a knowledge that their death follows the order of life. But when that death is sudden, unexpected, way too early, a shock, then to me those images seem to represent not just what’s gone before, not just what’s missing now, but also what’s been lost for the future. I can’t yet find any comfort in that.