Nothing is ever really lost to us as long as we remember it.”

Photographs!
Captured moments that would otherwise be gone forever.
I have a polystyrene pin board in my bedroom that is strewn with photographs. They bring into the present, times that have passed: my Dad holding a bunch of flowers in my dressing room, my siblings forty years ago, my aunt’s face creased into delighted laughter, my dog and I running along a beach, Mums laughing up at Dad……So many memories that lie in wait for me; every time my eye touches that board.

These photographs keep the people and places alive and ‘just around the corner’. They kindle memories that would otherwise be discarded and forgotten. That is why they are invaluable to me. I remember Mums saying to Dad: “If this house ever catches fire, apart from you and the children, the things I would rescue first would be my photo albums. Nothing can replace the memories they contain.”
“But you have shelves of photo albums. It would take you ages!”
“I would hurl them out the window,” my mother stoutly declared. “My memories would not go up in smoke!”
I couldn’t agree more.

Recently I received this letter from a woman named Carla.

I came across your blog last week and was preoccupied with your story, with you, with your magnificent bravery and strength.
My company, PrintWild, would like to send you a gift but I am not sure which of our products would be meaningful to you.

Do you enjoy looking through photographic prints? If so, then perhaps our PhotoBox would be a pleasant object to have on your shelf or table. If you would like to create your own PhotoBox, then please get in touch and I’ll send you a voucher code for payment. This includes door to door delivery within South Africa.

A PhotoBox features a high gloss acrylic image lid that is magnetised to the timber base. The unit holds up to 50 PhotoBox prints, they’re around A5 in size.

I went to their website and found a video all about a PhotoBox. I watched it with growing interest. What an amazing thing it was. A PhotoBox looked a complete treasure. And PrintWild had offered me one for free. What an incredibly magnanimous gesture!

Carla emailed me the voucher code and I then sat at my computer going through my photographs. I had reams of them. And yet I never saw them. They had sat in the computer as the months turned into years – forgotten. PhotoBox will deal with fifty of them, I thought. In fact, maybe I could have quite a few PhotoBoxes which I could store on my bookcase in the lounge. They could be displayed in turn on top of my washstand. I simply uploaded the photographs I wanted via the PrintWild website and finished my order by entering the voucher details.

Ten days later, I was handed a thickly wrapped parcel at my gate. It had arrived! Once inside, scissors in hand, I attacked the parcel – carefully! Finally, I was down to bubble wrap. I delicately unwrapped the final pieces and stared at my PhotoBox in wonder and delight. Perdita, my wire-haired dachshund, grinned at me from the acrylic top. Gently I lifted it to see a mound of beautiful glossy photographs inside. They were crisp and startling in both their colour and veracity.

I began looking through them. Memories gently sifted through my hands. Recollections of people and places, laughter and tears, all danced through my fingers and into my heart.

How could I possibly express what I felt on looking at that magical box of pictures. And this gesture was made by someone that I had never met. Carla was doing what we all should do. Giving merely because she was able to.

Carla and her company gave me a magical box. A box which holds something I prize so dearly: memories. Having lost so many memories due to my fall, memory is now a vital thing to me. Me and my friends will open this magical box and by doing so my memories will once more be rejuvenated. Time and time again.

A magical box brimming over with marvellous memories!

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