The last major move in my life was four years ago when my siblings and I sold my mother’s house downtown where I had lived the previous 12 years taking care of her until she passed away at 96 in 2020.
That move meant weeks and months of de-cluttering and emptying closets full of every kind of object and bits and pieces of the past, stuffed in untidy and perilous heaps such that for years I could not even open three of the four closets upstairs. Also, that’s because I had so many books, boxes and furniture blocking the doors to those closets which I discovered held long-forgotten treasures, but no family secrets.
I slogged my way into those former fortresses of memory, packed tight with the past, and completely cleared them out. What I discovered was revelation upon revelation in papers and meticulous law school class notes my father could not bear to toss out decades ago. Also I had to remove clothing and other items my mother could not part with, so they ended up in boxes in the closet. But the most precious find was hundreds of old family photos going back many decades.
It was in the exhausting process of sorting and looking at every one of them, many of which I don’t believe I had ever seen before, that intense resurrected memories flew before my eyes as if viewing a family home movie. We still have those also. I had them digitally converted two years ago, made screenshots and self-published small keepsake photo-books containing my favorite screenshots. I did the same thing with hundreds of the individual family photos from the 1950s through the 1980s that I retrieved from boxes and albums prior to the big move.
Me trying to look cool, 1965, age 14
But the photos, those classic snapshots, including Polaroids, from the 50s-80s are what made me stop and pause countless times to ponder the bonds and relationships I had with my relatives, parents and two siblings. The more photos I found the more emotional it became. There were a number of photos of my mother and me, along with my siblings from throughout those long-ago decades. I am always impressed by how stylish and elegant Mom was, even in the most casual snapshots. And that wondrous smile of hers that I see every day in photos from recent years, even in her last year when dementia and diabetes had taken their terrible toll. No known illness could subdue that radiant smile, always so pure and natural.
There were pictures of my father with his arms around me and my brother when we were 6 and 3; my brother, sister and I in a number of snapshots from the late 50s; my brother, father and I fishing in a pond about five miles out in the country from my aunt’s place in the small city of Sumter, SC, where my mother grew up; pictures of us at the beach during summer vacation; and photos of me and my parents and siblings with cousins, aunts and uncles when we all gathered in Sumter for Christmas. This was the only time I ever saw my cousins. There were also several photos with my grandparents in them, some of them holding me when I was a baby. I was their first of only two grandsons. I became especially close to my maternal grandmother, but sadly she passed away when I was only 14 in 1965.
I had a lifelong difficult, and at times emotionally abusive and toxic relationship with my father, a perfectionist I could never please or meet his expectations about who I should be, and how I should have turned out. So he basically wrote me off and concentrated on trying to mold my brother into his idealized image of the perfect son, a doctor, of course. That didn’t work out either.
Thus, it’s particularly poignant to see the photos of me and him and in photos of both of us when I was a small child. He looked so proud of me and happy. Then starting in my early teen years, and continuing into high school, I didn’t seem so happy in photos from that period. I looked too serious or slightly melancholy in a number of them. So even though pictures might be able to tell a thousand words, they often hide the true emotions and feelings of the subjects. But at the same time, many of the my favorite old family photos were taken on happy occasions such as Christmas gatherings and during summer vacations. I was a different kid during those times, and dad was, too. I regret that there are not photos that I could find of dad, my brother and I at Myrtle Beach, where he took us for a couple of days in the summers of 1958 and ‘59. We had such fun.
I also once wrote about coming across a picture of me and my father and brother on the sofa in our living room in New Orleans where I was caught up in a fit of laughter as we looked looked at a book of old “Herman” cartoons, probably from the late 1970s, but I can’t be sure. I had forgotten all about “Herman.” It was the “Drabble” strip that seemed to be about our family, and Dad and I had many laughs showing each other selected strips from that uncannily close-to-home comic.
Dad, my brother and myself laughing at a book of “Herman” cartoons, Christmas 1990
When I think of “Drabble” and look at those pictures of me and my father when I was growing up in the 50s, I feel a sense of remorse for how I’ve thought of him over the years, and I find a softer place of compassion and understanding in my heart and mind, almost 35 years after his passing. My way of forgiving him and hoping perhaps he forgave me for the grief I caused him, even if it wasn’t willful or done in spite.
Old photographs can do that.
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