Little Girl (8.3.1940)

I found an old photograph of my mother last night.
It was taken on Saturday August 3, 1940 at Nantasket Beach.
At the time, she would have been 12 years old, close in age to my youngest.
The photo was originally black and white but the passing of time has drenched it in antiquated sepia tones, similar to the way our own personal memories take on a rustication in the subtleties of detail.

In the picture, my mother is wearing a button down shirt with vertical stripes.
My mind automatically adds colour and I see vibrant red and white stripes that make me think of candy canes; a comforting child’s confection.
She’s looking back over her left shoulder and smiling a smile that I fondly remember. She was happy that day—I can see it in her eyes and sense it in the sweet innocence radiating from her face.

My intense joy in looking at this picture is tempered by my knowledge of what the future will bring her; the total devastation and loss of all people, places and moments in time that really meant something to her…perhaps like the day this photo was taken.

If I were an all-powerful being capable of miracles, I would have given her back this particular day: the warm sand between her toes, the brackish ocean breeze, the cute boy that smiled at her as she strolled the beach; I would give her back all the love and happiness she would sadly miss in her later years.

Though this picture breaks my heart in a bittersweet way, its chaste beauty heals me in a way I may never comprehend.
Maybe I’m not meant to know the ‘why’ of it.
I see the image above this post as the pure embodiment of my mother’s soul, at peace and forever frozen in time.
For me, it’s an unforeseen gift that disease will never take away.
I often forget that she was once just a little girl.
Maybe that’s what I’m meant to know.

 

Our father

I was talking to my sister the other night regarding our father’s current invisibility level. We are in total agreement.
Emotionally and conversationally, there’s nothing there.
Alzheimer’s has taken everything that once belonged to our father and left us with an undeniable reminder; his body and his blood; a sacrificial offering of sorts, albeit an unrecognizable version of the original.

Maybe it’s faith that allows us to continue caring and loving him as we did with no thought whatsoever given to the hopes of an actual returned response.

I sit with him these days and wonder if he’s really in there.

People say, “He knows you’re there.”

I truly wonder if he does. It’s so damn hard to know.

There were the small and seemingly insignificant moments that I shared with my mother, mystical fragments of time that occasionally appeared before me—subtle tests of my faith. We shared many sacred moments that transcended the earthly trappings of time and space, dissolving into an amazing kind of grace.
There will sadly be no magical moments like these with our father.
I’ve fruitlessly planted numerous seeds of hope knowing full well that life comes not from barren ground; thy will be done.
The bitter pill of disappointment has been swallowed time and time again but somehow faith lets the thinnest sliver of light bleed through the crack in the door.

His nurse tells me they take him to mass everyday, his daily bread.

If it offers even the slightest bit of respite for his tired and puzzled mind, it’s more than worth it.

I find visits with him these days to be somewhat devoutly symbolic when I realize the only thing he has left to offer me is his body and blood.
Do this in memory of me. . .

Perhaps, in some small way, he is ultimately teaching me how to rediscover my faith, my life.

His condition demands that I inspect my own lack of belief, a frail and dilapidated spiritual bridge I occasionally find myself unable to cross.
The other side seems so close yet my soul is still so damn far away.
In my mind’s eye, I see my father’s silhouette waiting on the distant shore and in my heart blooms a whisper of a prayer that one day I’ll make it all the way across.