A WOMAN SPENT 27 YEARS PHOTOGRAPHING HER PARENTS WAVING HER GOODBYE

We have become archivists of the self, I thought, curators of a life half-lived. Each countless photograph of a wonder, of dinner, of a view, of our children, of the utter banality of our everyday lives, was not a memento, a way of remembering the things we did, but instead evidence of the poverty of our engagement with the present moment.

I looked around my mother’s apartment and down into the box, swallowing the lump in my throat and holding back tears ready to race down my cheeks — because they weren’t just things. They were him. They were my father. They were pieces of his life.

Hair holds memory, but so do inanimate objects. That’s why we hold onto heirlooms, keep photos, make qu

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