Thanks for the happy memories

WE HAD our 13th wedding anniversary this week and celebrated at home with a Chinese takeaway meal and a bottle of wine (my husband’s lucky I’m a cheap date!).

We looked back at photographs — and I smiled to think that at both my weddings I wore purple. In 1968 it was a needlecord mini-dress. The register office bit was followed by a simple salad lunch (provided by my mother-inlaw) in our nearby flat, with just our two families.

In 2007, I wore a beautiful silk number that did duty at my daughter’s wedding two years later. Our small church wedding was attended by 40 people, and my tiny Maltese dog was bridesmaid, in a purple collar.

Looking at the photographs of that glorious sunny day made us happy, but a bit sad, too.

What the great poet T.S. Eliot called ‘the evening with the photograph album’ can sometimes end in tears.

For we mourned four people — my cousin’s husband Jim, friends Sue and Victoria, and my daughter’s adorable friend, Camilla — her dazzling smile below the post-chemo turban heartbreaking in its beauty. Each year Camilla’s mum sends me a poignant little card to remember the anniversary of her daughter’s death.

Then there are the couples we no longer see. Friendships shift and change, don’t they? You can drift apart because of geography or life changes (such as work), or even political differences. Real, deep friendships and family love may remain constant, but others fall away.

Does it matter? No. When we looked at the pictures I just chose to remember fun times with those people, and reflected that the relationships were true at the time and I’m grateful for the memories.

I still have my parents — and now four grandchildren, too, as well as great new friends. Although it can be hard, all of us have to come to terms with changes in our lives — and be glad the passage of time brings gains as well as loss.

Bel answers readers’ questions on emotional and relationship problems each week. Write to Bel Mooney, Scottish Daily Mail, 20 Waterloo Street, Glasgow G2 6DB, or email bel.mooney@dailymail.co.uk. Names are changed to protect identities. Bel reads all letters but regrets she cannot enter into personal correspondence.