Memories

My husband has been converting a shoe box full of slides into digital prints.  I'm not really sure where the shoe box came from.  I think we may have brought it home when we cleaned out my mother's house.

Seeing these photos that I have never seen in my memory is taking me on an emotional roller coaster ride.

I love seeing the pictures of my mom and dad as newlyweds, and pictures of my aunts and uncles as twenty and thirty somethings.

I love seeing pictures of me and my siblings as babies and little children.

I love seeing pictures of my grandparents, and great-grandparents, and their siblings.

But at the same time, the strength of how much I still miss those who have left this plane of existence is surprising.  I find myself blinking back tears as I look at the joyful young face of my Aunt Genny, who died in 2015.

My heart hurts when I see my Uncle Bill as a twenty year old with his life ahead of him, and wonder if he knew his life would be cut short after sixty-two short years in 1998.

I miss my Mom-Mom and Pop-Pop, my Aunt Nini and Uncle Will.  There are pictures of my Aunt Fran, who was a nun, and Mary Dunn, my mother's older sister who was always Mary Dunn and not Aunt Mary.

Aunt Fran spent many years in the missions, so I don't have the same number of memories of her, but because we saw her so infrequently, the memories tend to be more intense.

Mary Dunn was an enormous influence in my life.  I lived with her when my daughter was born.  She was a nurse, and a nurse midwife, and a neonatal clinical specialist.  She was a fierce feminist and protector of maternal and children's rights.  When she died in 1993, she left a hole in my life that will never be filled.

As I look at these pictures of so many people I have loved, I wonder what they pictured as their future when those pictures were taken.  I wonder if they realized their dreams, or if their dreams changed, or if they were disappointed in the lives they lived.

I wonder if they knew how very much they were loved, and that the love that was theirs in life continues unabated now that they are gone.

I realized that the pictures I carry in my head of all my relatives are pictures of people older than the people in these pictures.

I look at pictures of me as a small child, and I remember the dress I'm wearing and whether I loved that dress or hated it.  I remember the feelings of the days of the photos, if not the actual days.

I think about the picture of me I carry in my head, and wonder if my Aunt Dot and my Aunt Helen carry a picture of themselves that looks like one of these photos, because I know my internal me picture is in her thirties.

I feel so blessed to see these pictures, and to have these wonderful memories.  I feel so blessed to have had so many wonderful people in my family and in my life.

Yet I feel bereft for all I have lost.  For all those loved ones that I can no longer share this planet with.

So yes, a wild emotional roller coaster ride.  And I wouldn't have missed it for the world.