Photographs and Memories

Mom and Dad had just come back from a short trip to HK to attend the inauguration ceremonies of our uncle who was recently elected chairman of his commerce group. They met up with my great-aunt (my maternal grandmother's only sibling) and Mom had a lot stories to share with me when she and Dad got back home. One of the things that she mentioned in passing was that our great-aunt was very interested in seeing Swe-cha and said that she wished she had a picture. Now, my mom is proud of her grandsons, but she isn't really the type to carry a picture around in her wallet / bag so she had none to show and give. While Mom was telling me the story, she also commented that it would be embarassing (did not seem right) to give great-aunt a picture of Swe-cha when she had just returned great-aunt's family pictures to her. Huh ? As it turns out, Grandma (Ama) had loads and loads of pictures of her sister's family. When she passed away, her children discussed returning the photos but my uncle asked to keep them as mementos. Earlier this year, this same uncle passed away and his wife then gathered all these pictures together and let the siblings decide what to do with them because after all, they were pictures of our side of the family. The siblings decided to return them to great-aunt because that was the original plan after all. This set me to wondering... is this the usual practice ? I'm so bothered by what they did because I would want to have a picture of great-aunt to keep, I did get to meet her and spend some time with her while grandma was still alive. Obviously, Mom and my other aunts and uncles don't have any sense of family history at all.