This Yom Hashoah, I’m using laughter as an act of remembrance and resilience

It’s the morning of Yom Hashoah and I’m doing something extremely millennial. I’m searching for the best image of my late grandmother to post to Instagram.

I want the photograph to pull at all the appropriate heartstrings, to portray both Adela’s vulnerability and her strength. I’m aware of how performative social media is and a big part of me is cringing at the thought of putting my family’s trauma ‘on display’. Another part of me genuinely wants my followers to take note, to literally #neverforget that the six million lives lost belonged to real people, like my grandmother. 

Eventually I find it. It’s a candid photo of Adela sitting by herself, arms folded, as she often was, at a table by the edge of my sister’s birthday party in an iconic suburban Pizza Hut in Sydney. 

I imagine my grandmother is observing the kids playing pass the parcel and bitterly comparing it to her own joy-deprived childhood. I’m certain she’s quietly lamenting all the food going to waste. There was never a shortage of discarded crusts on the floors of the Pizza Hut parties of our youth. 

In the photo, Adela is wearing a fire engine red blouse and a white skirt. These are important details because when I scan the rest of the image, it takes me less than a second to realise that my grandmother has come to the party accidentally dressed as the Pizza Hut logo to her right. 

I start to giggle. It’s this laughter which prompts me to reconsider publishing the photo altogether.