Old Pictures, Old Stories

My grandfather died around three o’clock on a Friday afternoon.  My grandmother sat at his bedside, clutching his hands as he took his last breath.  My father and uncle stood stoically in opposite corners of the room.  They grieved in their own quiet way.  My aunts sat at the foot of his bed and dried their eyes with tissues.  My cousin, my brothers and I sat in a semi-circle of chairs and wept alongside each other.  We wished him well on his journey to heaven as we each said our tearful goodbyes. 

There was a long to-do list that followed.  In the planning of his arrangements, my task was to prepare the obituary that would summarize his life in 250 words or less.  As the writer in the family, I was charged with wordsmithing the document as my aunt sat beside me and fed me the specific details of the milestones in my grandfather’s life.  That was the easy part.  The hard part was finding a picture of him to include in the obituary.

He hadn’t sat for a professional portrait in several decades.  The most recent one that we could find was a wallet-size headshot that had been snapped sometime around his retirement from the city fire department.   In his dress white uniform shirt and black tie adorned with a Maltese cross pin, he appeared dutiful and trustworthy.  And with rosy red cheeks, snowy white hair and twinkling blue eyes, he looked very much the part of the all-American hero.  There was no dispute among us that it was the right picture for his obituary. Finding our way to it, on the other hand, had been quite an experience.  We began the search by looking through the picture albums that my grandmother had in the living room.  When we struck out with those, my aunt reached into the hall closet and pulled out a large, dusty shoebox that was filled with old pictures. 

Everyone in my family grabbed a stack of photos to sort through and took a seat on the sofa or the living room floor.  Within minutes, something magical had happened.  We were passing around old pictures of ourselves and laughing at the velour pantsuits that we wore in the 70’s and the mullet haircuts from the 80’s.  We ordered pizza and shared stories about old cars and beloved dogs from the past.  We laughed over how my cousin got the black eye that he sported in one photo, and how my little brother loved wearing a white muscle shirt with the Incredible Hulk on the front that had been ironed on upside down.  One of my favorites was a picture of my grandfather pushing me around in a wheelbarrow when I was just shy of a year old.  My folks joked around that I wasn’t delivered by the stork, but that I came from the flea market, and that’s how they got me home.  Underneath all those pictures, we finally discovered the photo that we had hoped to find.  My grandfather smiled up at us from the bottom of the cardboard box as if he’d meant for us to find that one last; as if he’d planned it that way all along.

It was a strange and wonderful evening.   I don’t think that any of us had expected to be sharing pictures, pizza and laughter just hours after the death of our loved one.  Perhaps it hadn’t hit me, or any of the rest of us just yet, but it didn’t seem like my grandfather had gone anywhere.  It felt to me like he was right there laughing along with us, in a celebration of life and love and family.

His funeral was a reflection of the way he had lived.  Simple, no frills, but marked with honor and dignity.  I read a poem that I had written for him.  A Presbyterian minister gave his eulogy, and at least a dozen city firemen in uniform stood at parade rest along his graveside in a show of brotherhood.  It was beautiful and memorable.   But where I really felt the spirit of him, and where I truly drew the most comfort, was in that big shoebox full of family photos that we had rummaged through two evenings before.

Each of us in my family claimed a favorite picture or two from the box.  After the funeral ended and we disconnected from each other to return to our homes, jobs, schools and all other aspects of life as usual, those pictures went with us. Some of the photos went on to be displayed in frames on coffee tables.  Some were scanned and used as the wallpaper on our computers.  Others were placed in lockets that are now worn close to the heart. 

All of them, I am certain, have been a tremendous source of comfort.

Maybe it’s because old pictures take us back in time, when life was low-tech, uncluttered and simple.  Back to the good old days of bellbottoms and bad haircuts, long before we had to deal with difficult things like illnesses and divorces and deaths.  And when those painful times of loss have happened, those pictures have been there to remind us that we’re not alone, and we never have been.  Those old family photos show us who we once were, and help us hold onto precious memories of the way things used to be.  They remind us that our lives are stories, with beginnings and endings, and some pretty amazing moments in between. 

It is my admitted hope and belief that the greatest stories remain untold.  They’re the stories that happen after ‘The End.’  The album that I keep of my grandfather’s photos mark the life of a kind and gentle man, from his sepia-toned childhood to his full-color career as a fireman and a family man, and his white-haired years as a grandfather.  It makes me smile to think that there’s a sequel unfolding for him right now and that one day I’ll be very much a part of it, just as I was in this lifetime.

Do you have an old picture that has helped you cope with a big change or loss, or that just means something special to you?