One of the parts I most enjoy about returning here to my home state of Virginia is getting to revisit some places and, in a sense, relive some experiences of living where I was born and bred. And part and parcel of reaping this reward is capturing memories as they manifest through writing and photography, two of my very favorite activities both personally and professionally.

Thus I strongly encourage others hoping to retain memories of their lives to intentionally capture them in order to catalog them for later reflection. As for me, a paper calendar helps chronicle important events, a penciled journal highlights personal milestones, and I edit all of my digital photographs as soon as I download them. Linda credits me with having a photographic memory but it is really just a recollection of compiled memories with accompanying images.

It was photographer Wright Morris who wrote in Time Pieces: Photographs, Writing, and Memory, “I glimpsed the connection between my own written words and the photographs I was taking. Rather than ponder the photograph, then describe my impressions, I found in what I had written the verbal images that enhanced, and enlarged upon, the photograph.” So true.

And as author Dan Kieran states, “Our existence is a narrative constructed through the experience of our own memory.” So with that thought in mind I recommend readers delete, discard, or otherwise destroy any memento that only serves to remind one of negative memories, bad experiences, toxic relationships, etc. Life is too short to dwell on the issues that no longer represent the person you are or the narrative you want to recount.

Conversely, I suggest compiling favorite photos and other memorabilia into albums, both digital and print, to enhance and facilitate the memory mining that makes for such enjoyable reminiscing. After all, our memories are only as strong as the reminders we give ourselves. Eventually, given a fresh perspective, our stroll down memory lane can be as poet T.S. Eliot described, “The end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”