Unpacking a Photograph

There was a long shelf in my mother's living room where she kept the wedding pictures of her children. 

Mine was still there, even though I've been divorced for almost ten years. It's a photograph that echoes one of my grandmother as a bride, long white gown with the train sweeping around me. My attendants’ bouquets encircle me. I think it was probably a popular pose in the 80s, one I wanted to make sure the photographer took. I was young and hopeful for all the beauty and wonder of life and love and of building a life and family together.

Mom kept that memory for me.

When my husband and I separated, I put the wedding album and all the framed photographs we had in our home away in a large bin. The bin is in storage along with bins that have many of our other family photographs. It was too difficult in those days to look at them. To see what had died.

But I love that my mother kept the memory of the girl who stood on the threshold of all the wonderful things in life, who was radiant with joy and ready to step into a new expression of her life. In my mother’s house it was one of many beautiful family memories.  

I can’t help but think I am standing on another threshold as I grieve the death of my mother.

Bereavement is liminal space. An old life has ended. The landscape of the new is not clear. There is a radical reorientation of everything. New maps are being drawn. Literally.

There is something this writing wants to capture today – the way a photograph captures a moment in time and makes it live forever.

Love is risky. We know that the people in our lives come and go. And to love them is to acknowledge that one day we will lose them. But we still take the risk. We open ourselves to loving and to being loved.   

Yesterday I unpacked the photograph and set it down quickly. Charlie was coming for lunch and there was food to prepare and the table to set and time to spend together. This morning I walked into the living room and picked up the framed photo and held it in my hand. 

It was a living thing in my mother’s house, a piece of a larger family story. I’m not sure what it is today, or where it belongs.

 

 

 

 

 

Creating Space: Three Months of Showing Up for What’s Showing Up is a daily writing practice.

 Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012 and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.