A note from my mum stirs my memory of her more than a photograph ever could | Paul Daley

The words evoke her presence in a house she never entered. Dad, conversely, feels far more absent - he wasn't one to write

Some things you only learn with the hindsight of loss and the significant passage of time.

One of them for me is that photographs of family and friends who have died fail to stir my memories of them in quite the same way as encounters with their written words.