You find these things, photographs, moments, old yous, as you sort through your dead parents’ belongings. I find ten plastic bags full of old photographs. Unsorted, unmarked. I tell myself that I will classify them, label them, put them in albums, scan them… but in truth I will get a bag out from time to time, look at the photographs, smile, talk about them, to them, shed a few tears and put them away again.

my mother’s eyes
talk to me from the past
pansies and snowdrops

Paul Conneally
January the 7th 2022