hold the moments

I have a very vivid memory of when my great grandfather passed away. In the midst of my family making funeral arrangements and sorting belongings, boxes upon boxes upon boxes of photographs where piled high on my mother's obscenely long dining table. I had only met the man a few times in my life, and all the visits had been brief, but looking through the stacks of photographs seemed to give me a clear understanding of the man he was and the life that he lived.

There were albums, framed portraits, loose snap shots... The entire table was covered with memories. I saw photos of family members I had never seen or heard of before, ancestors and distant relatives, and some familiar faces too. I found pictures of my great-grandfather and great-grandmother-- their wedding, their family portraits with my own grandmother as a child, their life together through the decades. There were photos of my grandmother's wedding day. Pictures of my mother and all five of her siblings as infants and toddlers, as teenagers and then as adults. Every milestone, every precious memory my great-grandfather had, I found in those boxes. And I remember thinking that that was what I wanted-- a full life that even if I wasn't there to tell the tales, the stories would still live on.