In this one you're wearing a cap and gown.

Here's you traipsing around in Mummy's heels.

Here's you in your own. Remarkably similar, the shoes. Perhaps I bought yours for you, I certainly borrowed them.

In this one you're about to squirt the photographer with the garden hose.

This is one of your kitchen after that deep-fryer caught fire. There are black marks all up the wall—we took a picture for posterity, but you had a better idea and just never cleaned it up.

In this one you're tiny in the hospital bed, bewildered with tubes going in and out of you.

This is one of you in a nurse's outfit, ready for a fancy dress party.

Here's one of your toy-box, and later there's one of your book shelf and there's one of your garden shed, with stuff all strewn on the bench. Anyone else would have cleaned that up for the photo, but you would have wanted it ''naturalistic.'' ''Keep it real'' you would have said.

This is of some sunset, somewhere, or perhaps it's a sunrise. It's an unremarkable photo so it must have had some emotional significance, now we'll never know what it was.

I rip it (surprising even myself) in two. This photo means nothing (literally) now you're gone. I get up and walk to the rubbish bin, place the two halves on top of each other and rip them again for good measure before opening the bin with the foot pedal, dropping them in and letting the lid clang back into place. I want to dust my hands dramatically against each other ''that was that'' and dispose of the rest of these feelings. At least for now.

It doesn't work.

I go back to the table. There are now photos everywhere, not in the neat piles I'd planned: some to give to your brother, some for me and your father to keep, some to post to Jenny for when she gets back from that therapeutic trip your girlfriends have taken her on.

She'd want this one, although it's from before she knew you. It's of you in your school dress, standing straight and tall and beaming, uncharacteristically pleased to be off to school for some reason. Let's look at the back. No clues. Not even a date. Well, she'd like the mischief in your eyes. ''What's she up to?'' It makes you wonder, ''What's she planning?'' ''Will I ever know her deeply enough that if she's gone I'll remember her well enough . . . ?'' The answer's ''no,'' and now it's too late. But we did our best, or most of the time we did, when we weren't too tired, or too broken, or too worried about you and your friends and what was going on when we couldn't be there to protect you.

OK, where was I? The table looks like I'd given you the job of sorting these out: there's a mess everywhere. How you ever got anything done I'll never know . . . I honestly will never know. I don't want to do this now, or ever. But I can't even bring myself to swipe them all back into the big box. I'll just leave them here for a bit, until you're father comes home and wants his dinner, I guess. And then we'll have to clear them up. I'll keep myself busy in the kitchen, and ask him to do it.

And I'll come out, a saucepan of steaming vegetables in my oven-mitted hands, and he'll be bent over them with moist eyes, and perhaps then we'll be able to cry together. And then pack them away. For another time.