Opened Boxes, Closed Chapters.

Been going through boxes of family photos trying to draw some order out of the decades of family life relegated to cardboard and mildew. Looking at old photos, scratched and yellowed, the memories come back in living technocolor, rich in emotion, outside of time.

Familiar laughter, vivid grief, warm and melancholic nostalgia. Mom and Dad, so happy on their trip to visit me when I was working in London. Mom's first time outside of the country since their honeymoon in Bermuda almost 30 years earlier, she was like a giddy kid the whole trip. She had inoperable cancer by this point, which I think she intuited, but she canceled the appointment to see her doctor before the trip, because she didn't want to be told she coudn't go. On a lighter note, how very Mom, looking great and happy--and having her napkin tucked into her skirt.

Another box yields the first Easter picnic after Mom died. It was important to us to carry on the traditions even though we felt leaden and far from wanting any sort of celebration. The picture of Gigi drinking coffee is one of my favorites--it shows her true beauty in her smile. If you didn't know the subtext to the photo, you'd think "What a warm reminiscent time she's having." Looking closer with knowledge, it's a woman smiling through extraordinary pain, the ultimate brave face.

Scamper looking like Miss October. And she popping into one of the picnic pics, too. Our animals were full fledged, backstage pass carrying family members. Scamper and Spot our cat both slept with Mom on her hospital bed during her hospice home care. The nurses were a little freaked out about Scamper yanking out Mom's triple lumen catheter, or Spot creating too much pressure on Mom's abdomen. Spot would sleep on Mom's tumor. Mom said he was trying to hatch it.

One time during Mom's illness, after I was getting over chicken pox, I went up to my bedroom and was greeted by the following sign she had taped to my door. She did things like this for Scott and me all the time. Wow, we were lucky. Won the parents Lotto.



This last picture totally captures the weekend we scattered Mom's ashes at Bank Street. The melancholy, the heartache, all there. Kodachrome grief, just like it was yesterday



Lots of history in a box.