The Photos

My oldest childhood friend recently contacted me to say that he had come across some old photos of me and my family and would like to send them to me here in Bali. He does not remember how he happened to end up with these photos, nor do I. I am glad, however, that he had them, as I had previously thought all my old photo albums had been taken to the dump by my ex-wife. 

The photos came in a big envelop today -- many more photos than I had imagined -- and what a joy it was to see all these people again -my mother and father and brother, my cousins, aunts and uncles, childhood friends and beloved dogs. It's funny how a photo can instantly restore one's memory. I can look at almost every photo and remember being there, with these people, what we were doing. 

At the same time, there is a sad feeling. Each moment captured seemed so permanent at the time, each person so permanent. How casually we posed in each frame of time, not knowing that everyone and everything that we saw and touched and loved would so completely pass away from the world. I can tell the story told by every photo; I can hear the voices and feel the breeze and smell the trees or my mother's perfume or the scent of the rain; I can feel the sun and the water on my skin. It is all here forever, yet gone forever.

And I think now, as always, of how fortunate I was to be at the center of such a family, to be the beneficiary by birth of such strength and devotion, of such a mother as mine, of such a father as mine -- and I feel, somehow, that I have betrayed it all, that I have not become what they were, nor what I was meant to be. I feel fractured in the face of such wholeness. 

I don't know ... maybe everyone feels that way.