This is Day 4 of “7 Stories in 7 Days”. I asked my Facebook followers to give me a line from a favorite song to use as a writing prompt. I have not looked up the context of these lines so any similarity to the actual song is purely coincidental.

It was their first anniversary and the young couple was sitting on the sofa reminiscing about their wedding a year prior. Leafing through the photo album and turning to the photo of them kissing, she turned to him and said “We keep this love in a photograph, we have these memories for ourselves.” He sat there, studying her as he thought back to that moment.

“No, this photo hold no love, it holds no memories.It is nothing more than a snapshot in time. You can walk into most any antique store and find old framed portraits hanging on the walls. Those pictures are no different than this one you are holding in your lap, a photographic image printed on paper. Those photos on the wall may hold history, but there is no love or memories there. It is no different than, say, the Declaration of Independence. I’m sure all those involved in the creation and signing of arguably the most important document in US history had many emotions and memories associated with that process. Can we experience those emotions today? No. Can we share in those memories today? No. Can we appreciate the effort and the history contained on that single sheet of paper? Absolutely.

“Memories and emotions are a living, breathing thing.Inanimate objects don’t hold them. They may help evoke memories and feelings associated with them, but they are memories and feelings you already have. I’ve heard people interviewed on the TV news after surviving a catastrophic house fire. How often do they say something like ‘we lost a lifetime of memories in that fire”? They may have lost every tangible possession they owned, but they still have their memories and the emotions that go along with them. That’s why I have so much empathy for those suffereing from Alzheimer’s and dementia, I think it far worse to lose all memories than losing possessions.

“I cherish these pictures of our wedding day. I hope we are able to look back on them in our old age. But what I cherish more is the love I have for you and the memories of that day that I hold in my heart.”