Wow, I can't tell you how much I enjoyed reading this post. Thank you for sharing such personal thoughts. This was so heart felt and I related to it in so many different ways. Both my mom and dad loved art. My mother passed away when I was three and at about 14 I was digging through some old buried stuff and found one of her sketch books. I had so many feelings at once. I was mad that she was gone and that she didn't leave me with more artifacts and memories, but I was also grateful and happy to have found something so personal to her.
You have an amazing talent, and even though some of them bring bad memories, they are memories that you have built up from and learned from. So keep them and treasure them.