In the past few weeks I have been faced with the prospect of clearing out my parents’ home, after my father’s relocation to a nursing home.

Funny about life. Just when you think you’ve lived a fair chunk of it, and you think you’ve got most things covered, something new hits you for six and you have to regroup, rethink, and reinvent yourself into new circumstances. Dealing with old people moving on from their home, whether to a new location (like mine), or because of death, is nothing new. We have been dealing with this transition since the beginning of time. And yet there is an element of, ‘Oh, I remember when my mother did this when I was only five,’ or, ‘So that’s how my friend must have felt when she had to deal with every object in her parents’ home after they died.’

Most people, by the time their parents move to a final residence, or die, have amassed a great deal of stuff. There is furniture, ornaments, knick knacks, gadgets, clothes, electrical appliances, crockery and god only knows what else. By the time one’s parents are elderly and move on everyone has probably already been once through a complete revamp of their own stuff, pretty much replacing everything old and dated with newer junk. So there is really not any room to transpose another household of stuff on top of what’s already in place. Clearly, unless one is a hoarder, some stuff needs to be moved on, donated, gifted, sold, or just thrown away.

But there are some things in a house that are too precious to let go. Luckily, in my case, these things are few. The old fashioned sewing machine with a trundle pedal action, old photographs, many of them documenting the stages of my own and my parents’ lives, the trinket that I remember through child’s eyes, and the odd piece of jewellery that has sentimental rather than monetary value.

You don’t have to keep everything. Just a handful of things, and you have captured the essence of the past. And of your own place within that past. And of the people who did so much to care for you in that past.

Some objects sail through decades unscathed. Other things, like the photo above, should have been more carefully preserved. It’s lost all its colour, and looks as though it will one day just fade away in a haze of orange and yellow. I remember the day it was taken. Or rather, I remember not realising, the day it was taken, that someone was taking a photograph of me. I attended a kindergarten run by nuns in a convent housed within a large hospital in a regional city in Northern Italy. The day of the photos, I was lined up in the corridor like everyone else, and ushered into the room where we usually did our kinder tasks and had lunch. Except that this time there were no other children in the great room, only a few adults. In the middle of the room, someone had set up some strange equipment. I was sat at a table that had toys arranged on it. These were toys that were usually kept for ‘good’. I don’t recall usually being allowed to touch them. And touch them I did not on even on this day.

All I did was sit there for a moment or two, and then I was just as quickly ushered out again. I did not know what had taken place, and I did not wonder what it meant. I asked no questions. A few minutes after leaving the room, the experience dropped off the edges of my mind. The pieces fell into place a few weeks later when the photo came home. My mother was thrilled with it, and she put it in an elegant, fine silver frame where it still sits to this day. Except that now I have taken it out to have it copied and preserved for all time, before it degenerates further.

What a blast, a five year old child who does not recognise a camera! It was another world for us, screen-less, technology-deprived pre-schoolers. Nothing to distract us – ever – not even in the car. Are we there yet?