teapot1

teapot1

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

P is for Photograph

  
P    Photograph    
                            Five of us are seated around a table at the Cheesecake Factory, facing the camera. My husband and I on the left, and across from us are my mother and my two cousins, who have driven up from New York for the day to visit—and, unspoken, to pay respects to their aunt before she fades away. Outside of the frame is the photographer: my nephew, who is our waiter tonight.


There are empty glasses on the table and two small teapots; we’ve finished our meal. We all smile brightly as people do for the camera, but my mother’s smile is wan, almost straight. My cousins sit beside her, two of the remnants of her family, the daughters of her brother and her sister. There were six of them at one time, three sisters and three brothers, children of the Depression and two world wars, of the automobile and the airplane. Five of them are gone now; she is the survivor, my mother, the strongest of the group. But she doesn’t know that she is. In her mind they all still survive, as does her mother, my grandmother, who died fifty years ago. Time is just a confusion to her now.


Despite the passivity of her smile, my mother looks content. But here is what the picture doesn’t show: the shattering of her life four years ago. The memory no longer lives in her but lingers around the periphery of her mind, shadowing it so that she has to ask me, every so often, “Where is David?” She is not, at least, doomed to remember our vigil at the hospital while my brother was dying. I am doomed to remember it. His wife and children are doomed to remember it. But my mother’s doom is more subtle and terrible: the shutting down of all memory.


In a minute my nephew will sit down next to her. David, named after his now-gone father. He looks handsome in his white shirt and tie, the waiter’s look. He has a large smile and bright eyes, and he loves his grandmother, as she does him. Another question not answered here: how will he handle her loss, after that of his father? No photograph can show loss, but it lies behind all our faces, our eyes. My cousin, who lost her father, brother, and mother within three years, whose son has cerebral palsy and whose husband has multiple sclerosis. My husband, who lost his mother a few  years ago and whose father has endured two amputations.


But this day has been good for us. When time and death fragment a family, we have to put the remaining pieces of love together however we can. Time spent together, crystallized in a photograph. As a family we’ve been lucky enough to love, respect, and even like each other, and in the end that’s really what this picture will show us: what is solid and material and what is invisible yet as real as a table, a teapot, or a smile.


5 comments:

  1. this made me cry..you painted the picture of life so well with your words. "When time and death fragment a family, we have to put the remaining pieces of love together however we can" amen

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  2. Brenda Stevens shared this amazing blog. You could have almost been writing about my family, or ANY family. These are heartfelt, beautiful words and I hope that everyone can read them and for a single moment appreciate their family members and the love that surrounds them. Thank you!

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  3. P is for Poignant...after recently losing my grandmother to this world I pondered how we as a family actually lost her years ago which was a new level of sadness to her passing. She did not "see" my children because she was slowly slipping away. Thank you for writing this as it was part of a much needed healing process!

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  4. How beautifully you sum up the love and loss of family in a single picture. I know that wan smile as I see it in every picture of my mother after her traumatic brain injury, only she knew what she lost and it was heartbreaking as well in that respect. Again, I am touched by the coming together of your family to celebrate your mother, her life and the lives she touched just for the sake of doing with an outpouring of love. You have a remarkable family Elaine. Her legacy is in building it and your legacy is in the keeping of it for her. Bless you all.

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  5. Photographs and memories can be beautiful. Time can be fleeting. There will be a day, when we will all sit down together again. Of this, I am certain.

    Nice to meet you Tea. Beautiful post.

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