We gathered last evening for our weekly dinner together, as many of our family as could make it.
Slightly less than 11 months ago we had all been here bedside in the family room to say a most tearful goodbye to my wife of 50 years, mother of four, grandmother of 10.
There in the family room we have faced cancer, death, sadness, and grief. At such times tears drip like drops captured in slow motion from a shutter left open and we’re exposed, to the depths of our soul.
As of late, a narrow path leads from the front door, past the dining room table, to the family room.
The path is narrow because family members must weave their way past boxes and boxes – and boxes – of a half-century accumulation of treasures forgotten, and memories priceless.
From hidden corners of the basement, where accumulations of dust and cobwebs must be brushed aside in order to discover what scrawled label identifies the prized possessions within, the boxes are laboriously hauled up the stairs for the kids to go through and the treasures of my wife and I become the treasures of our children when they leave for their own homes.
We have known here in the family room a pain so deep, a grief so wide, that except for sobs we’ve simply sat in silence.
Not so last night.
One of the boxes from the basement burst when lifted, the bottom giving way to spill its contents on the table where it had been placed, the dinner dishes having been removed and family-members-become-treasure-hunters opened what had not been seen for so many years.
“Dad? What’s this?”
Odds and ends of photographic paraphernalia lay scattered across the table.
I smiled.
“This,” I said, holding up the squeeze ball attached to the impossibly long tube with the tiniest of plungers on the opposite end, “is a ‘remote control’ shutter release,” and I demonstrated its still-working capabilities from its use in a time long ago and in a land far away.
It didn’t take long before family amazement became mostly amusement as dad recounted – like a continuous roll of film – his sometimes contortionist efforts to pursue his photo interests from high school days.
And side-splitting laughter – the kind that hurts, joyfully hurts – filled the room.
