These Are My Favorite Moments, the Ones I Won't Remember

memories, too many photographs, and the blur of life | No. 007

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

10,733. That’s the number of photos on my phone’s camera roll stored from the last 11 years. The first year of photos, 2013, contains only a very small fraction of the 10,733 photos. Looking back to that year, I notice I’d go weeks without taking a single photo. 2013 was my first year owning an iPhone and I was unused to having a camera in my pocket 24/7, so I often didn’t think to take any pictures. Over the next couple years, this would start to change. Now, in 2024, we take pictures nearly every day, often many photos of the same moment or event.

Maybe this is about losing the ability to be present in the moment, the rise of social media and online sharing, or the cultural norm of excessive picture taking with the phones that never our sides. Maybe it’s about our obsession with ourselves and the need to be seen or maybe it’s about something else entirely.

Or are we all just trying so very hard to ensure we remember our own lives and hold on to the moments we spent with people, places, and things we loved?

When I was kid, I attended a small Christian school. One of the subjects we were graded on that had its own line on our report cards was “memory.” We would have weekly memory work assigned at the beginning of the week and we would have until Friday to inscribe the assignment into our brains before individually taking our turns verbally reciting it to our teachers. The 66 names of the books of the Bible, in order. The Gettysburg Address. Psalm 23. I was a nerdy kid, and I liked memory work. It always came pretty easy for me, and I even thought it was a little bit fun.

Now, as an adult, I walk into a room and can’t remember what I went in there for. I don’t know what I had for breakfast yesterday. I can’t tell you what I did for my birthday two years ago. I often scroll back in my camera roll, using it to fill in holes in my memory, searching by year or location to find pictures of the moments I want to recall, but are fuzzy around the edges or gone altogether.

My Grandma Aileen is almost 90 years old. She has an astounding, legendary, unbelievable memory. She birthed nine children and was married to my character of a grandfather for over six decades. She has lived a lot of life in her time; yet, she can recall the seemingly most mundane details of life events - “It was 1961, February 15th, right after breakfast. It had snowed 11 inches that night . . .” She knows the birthdays of all her children, all their spouses, and even the birthdays of her dozens of grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

We are all amazed when she nonchalantly chimes in with such specific details filling in the gaps of stories long forgotten by others. It probably goes without saying, but Grandma has no camera roll.

The only camera roll she has ever had is in her mind.

Photo by Jess moe on Unsplash

Years ago, she mentioned how my grandfather had sent her love letters in the 1950s early in their relationship when they were communicating long-distance. My mom asked her where the letters were now.

My grandmother, with no hesitation, said: “Oh, I read them and burned them! I was never going to let anyone see those but me!” We were horrified she would burn them, but at the same time, I thought that was the most badass thing I’d ever heard.

My mom said she would have kept the letters so she could always remember what they said. My grandma replied, “Oh, I know what they said.”

Most people don’t have my grandma’s memory skills. I don’t. I want to remember so many things, and I’ve gotten to the point where I’m at least honest with myself, that nope, I’m not going to.

For me, the reason I take so many pictures is that I’m swimming in the moments I won’t remember.

The day our littlest baby joined us on the outside

I want to hold all these memories in a jar, put a lid on it, and carry it around with me. The things I swear I’ll remember, the things I just know I can’t forget, somehow start to fade. The goofy antics from my middle kid. Just how far my oldest kid has come. The squishy cheeks of my newborn. How sweet my husband is with all three of them. Since I can’t put these memories in a jar and my own memory is unfortunately human, the best I got is my camera roll.

When foster kids leave our home, I send them with a photo album of their time with us. I want them to remember that even though it was the hardest time, they still laughed, smiled, played, celebrated happy moments, and in many ways, were just kids.

At the end of May, our littlest was born. We’ve taken way too many pictures this past month. Maybe there is no such thing as too many pictures, that’s what my own mom would say.

For now, I’ll keep taking too many photos of my babies and other beautiful people, places, and things.

These are my favorite moments after all, the ones I won’t remember.