Dad is turning 75 this week and a modest celebration is planned, the centerpiece of which is likely to be the taking of a new family portrait to mark the occasion.
Molly was in the last family portrait.
I’ll smile for the camera and everything. I’ll stand just where I am told and wear whatever I am asked to wear. But I really don’t want a new family portrait. I understand that “everyone” will be there and that it takes an enormous amount of effort to get us all in one place. We should mark the occasion.
Make no mistake, however. Everyone is actually not going to be there. Without including Molly, I don’t know if I will ever consider this picture a “family” photo. Even posing for it is going to be difficult.
And yet. I have many family photos in my home, several of which are ancestral photos of relatives who had died before I was born. I treasure the photos because they connect me to myself; I can get lost in studying the hairstyles, clothing choices and even the individual smiles of those who came before me. I sense their courage and know something about how their lives played out after the photos were taken.
If anyone takes the time to make a study of our family photos over the last 50 years, the births and deaths, marriages and divorces, adoptions and assorted partnerships will be evident. This new photo will be one in a long string of many, many comings and goings.
But in this moment for me, this next photo is a painful reminder of all that I have lost. I imagine that an observer, 50 years from now, will easily sense how much I mourned for the girl who after almost 17 years suddenly does not appear in this next family photo.
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