Souvenirs

I love nostalgia, i love drifting through memories, looking at old photos, i usually get teary, not from sadness, unless it's sad, but from that hard to grasp, hard to explain feeling of remembering moments, people, feelings

I just don't keep so many souvenirs now - mostly because i don't know where to keep em, i don't make scrapbooks anymore, because I have no room to scrap, and all my photos are on my phone...

And since cancer, i really almost completely live in the now, or actively work on that. I mean i reminisce, and enjoy traveling through old times, but i don't dwell or regret or pine...

Today i was cleaning out a shit ton of stuff that my cleaning angel had cleared out of my bookshelves and put into bags for me to deal with.  Had a lot of memory lane moments. But i kept finding various items from the cancer year, folders from the hospitals with after care info, notes from medication timing and dosing, pamphlets on whatever, evena a hospital bracelet, they kind of gave me a stab of pain, and for a second i felt i needed to put them in the "save" pile, but really a millisecond, then i thought, are these "souvenirs"? I don't want to deny or forget that time, i value all of the lessons, i very clearly remember how goddamn hard it was, i am crystal on the love and care i received, but i don't really care to remember the little details like that, in a concrete physical way.  So they are gone
I did keep the cards from my friends though....those lift me like nothing else

What about you? do you keep any "souvenirs" from that time?