2DREZQ

The next time you chance to visit a rest home, take a good look at the photographs you find there. In almost every room you’ll see them. Moments, usually happy ones, frozen in time. Black-and-white images of people, often in the prime of life, faces unlined except for smiles, staring into your eyes.
Some photographs, though, show other emotions. A mother and father, seven children around them, lined up beside a twenties-vintage sedan. Mother is seated in an old chair with a baby in her arms. No smiles here. A look of near hopeless fatigue and grimness of soul radiated from their eyes. None of them look overfed. The dusty gray car behind them with suitcases tied on it’s fenders appears to be all they own. Did they lose everything in the great depression?
Pulling back from the photograph: An old woman sits quietly in her wheelchair. From her age, she would be the oldest daughter in the picture, the one daddy has his arm around. His left hand rests gently on her shoulder. She was old enough to understand how desperate things were. You can read it in her face.
She’s dozing now. I won’t disturb her with a lot of silly questions. Besides, the pictures tell her story well enough: A young bride, her arm entwined around her husband’s, smiles out from another photo. Despite the smile the look of the tentative little girl still hovers around the eyes. Life’s been hard, and she isn’t used to being happy, yet. The handsome young groom in the corporal’s uniform is smiling like it’s the luckiest day of his life. Maybe it was.
Other photos draw my eye. That same bride, in color now, not so young, and an older, wider and silver-haired groom stand with hands locked together. (I can almost hear the photographer saying: “Now lean closer, good, now big smile!” Flash!) Her husband still carries the look of an old soldier about him, and her face, lined from far more smiles than frowns, has none of the fear that the child’s face conveyed. Instead it radiates a sense of balance; of contentment.
The corporal must be gone now. He isn’t in any other pictures. In his place are adults, of an age to be the grown children. Two men and three women. All of them have their mother’s eyes and that corporal’s air of purpose and energy. (I wish I had known him. I’d guess I would have liked him a lot.) The pictures have changed now to the borderless snapshots, all stuck, ever-so-slightly-haphazardly to the wall. Children again, blond and brown-haired and beautiful. There must be thirty of them
The ages and number suggest great-grandchildren. (Yes, there are other pictures of young adults - the grandkids- now taking pictures of their own children to send to great-grandma.) What a crew! The noise of joyful ruckus is almost audible in my mind! Kids laughing and running, on the swings and in clear pools splashing with total abandon. No fear or hunger to be seen, just happiness.
The woman in the wheelchair stirs a bit, but doesn’t awaken. It’s been a long day and she’s tired.
I’m sure most of the people in these photographs have seen that first picture. (All but the very youngest, I’d guess.) But, have they really looked? They can probably point out mom, or grandma, but have they seen? She struggled, along with her parents and six siblings, just to eat and have a roof above them every night. A battle for survival that none of them will ever know first-hand.
She’s not going to be with us much longer. Old age, diabetes and heart disease always win in the end. She will die, probably quietly, surrounded and loved by many of her family. They’ll be sorry to lose her, but relieved for ma’s sake that the pain is ended. Then the photos will come down, some packed away, some discarded, and some into family albums. That first photograph will end up in an album. Unseen though preserved, and the young girls story of hardship and triumph will pass from living memory; just a piece of history, lost in the hazy past.