When Memory Is A Blessing

Earlier this week, I was doing a bit of tidying up when I came across a photo book from a Leadership Academy I attended years ago with a former employer. I sat down  flipping through it and ended up staying there much longer than I had planned. The photos pulled me right back.  Faces, moments and the laughter from that particular season of life,  I found myself smiling, then reaching out to a few colleagues from that time, sharing photos and laughing over messages that started with, “Do you remember this?”

It reminded me how powerful memories are and how easily they transport us back to a season past. Something as simple as a photo can reconnect you to people and moments that still matter, even after time has moved on.

Yesterday was a colleague’s mum’s death anniversary. When she mentioned it, I realized she had been carrying this for a few days, even if she was still showing up and getting on with the day. That’s when the thread connected for me.
Having lost my dad in 2021, I understand how certain dates and moments can bring people to mind. Not in a way that stops life, but in a way that settles alongside it. And I realised that missing the people we love is natural because love doesn’t end. It simply changes form and often, it shows up as memory.

Memories don’t announce themselves. They arrive through small things like a photo book, a familiar phrase or a song  that you hear and still makes you smile without warning. And suddenly, someone who isn’t physically present feels close again.

This morning, that thought returned when my cousin sent me a draft she’s working on, a memoir about her late mother, who was also my Mainini.

Mainini loosely translates to “little mother” or “younger mother,”  The English translation aunty doesn’t quite capture the relationship. You can call several people aunty both close and distant. In many African families, a Mainini is another mother entirely, deeply involved and deeply woven into your life.

Reading my cousin’s words felt like another reminder that memory can be tended to  preserved and passed on. Writing, like photographs, is a way of preserving what mattered.

A verse came to mind that felt perfectly aligned with all of this. It’s Proverbs 10:7

“The memory of the righteous is a blessing.”

Not was a blessing.
Is.

There is comfort in  the idea that memory of good people we met carries blessing. That remembering is notsomething we need to rush past, but something we are allowed to hold with gratitude because it is a blessing.

So this week, I am grateful for memories.
Thankful for photos that reconnect us.
Thankful for people who shaped us.
Thankful for music memories that still have the power to make us smile.

This song Sina Makosa brought memories of my father when I saw a clip of it on TikTok and I found myself smiling 😃

Gratefully