Re: Remembering Norwich

In June last year, I wrote a blog called Remembering Norwich. I was discussing my memory and how I couldn’t remember a family holiday to visit my aunt and uncle living in Norwich. I hadn’t dared to bring the topic back up again with my family because I had been snapped at by a couple of family members for saying I couldn’t remember being there, which they insisted I was. 

In my last blog, “Don’t Steal the Tiramisu” I was talking about the loss of my gran over the Christmas/New Year holidays. It was her funeral on Friday last week (8th of January) and my family had put together a whole load of photographs of my gran from when she was young up to the present day. There were some fantastic photographs in the album that I had never seen before and everyone seemed very keen to have a look through the album.

For the last 8 years I had felt very guilty of the lost memory of Norwich, especially since the memories of my aunt are very precious to me. She died too young. She was such a lovely and caring person, I just couldn’t imagine forgetting such an important event in my life.

There was one family photograph in the album of the family with my dad, sister, gran, aunt and uncle, but two people were missing from it: my step mum and me. One of us must have been taking the photograph, but no one was ever missed out of a family photo unless it was the person behind the camera. That person would have been my step mum and the photo looks like it was one taken in Norwich…

After feeling all that guilt and shame, it seems as though it wasn’t my memory that was wrong after all! It seems a very strange thing to feel relieved about, but it really had hung around my neck making me feel really bad for a long time.