How do you keep the music playing in your life? The kind that gives meaning to the days, warmth to the nights, zest to ordinary moments, flow to the blood in your veins?

The answer will be as individual as us all. Your passions, my loves, their mission, his one thing, her “can’t live without” until life changes, that is. Then when we find something new or even reminiscent of what has gone before, we can get excited all over again. Life is just like that, eh?

I thought I knew what to do in relationships then realized that I have only known a part of what it was like. There’s always the other person’s perspective. Then there’s the erosion as memory fades or doubt enters in or something else altogether. Then one party moves away. It could be death. It could be a parting of ways. It could be the presence of someone new that pushes out the old or questions you, him, her. And if by chance the whole encounter or encounters or memory or memories become tainted by emotion then everything changes again. We may crumble into a pile of tears. We may strike up a rage within us, swearing to never live that way again. We may never want to love again for to do so would risk the pain of loss: too great a price to pay. Or so we say. Chances are good that we probably WILL love again. Or love something instead of a someone. To love is to be alive, really. And I submit to you that we must never ever give up.

I’m not sure why the relatively sudden passing of an Uncle is bringing up so many different thoughts and emotions. My Uncle Larry, my Mom’s brother in-law, was well loved by so many and is now gone. I was the first in my extended family of cousins to meet him as I was the oldest grandchild in both of my parent’s families. At age 5, I was the flower girl in the wedding of my Mom’s sister Shirley, to the man who would become my Uncle Larry. As the years went on I would have painful memories with him along with many good ones too. Swimming in his parent’s in-ground pool was simply the best. But most of the better memories have come in more recent years. I am older now. I can now say that I am glad I got to live all of these moments; I can see now that even the more painful ones were used by God to teach me things, toughen me, humble me, and bring me to the altar of forgiveness. Letting my Uncle Larry go means releasing everything from our relationship as family in addition to the varied emotions that pulled me around for too many years. The goodness in the mix is more important now and will be ones with which will go forward in my life. 

So I will focus on the goodness. I cannot say the same for my immediate family. My younger brother is now gone. My youngest and other brother is now gone. My Mother is now gone. My Father is now gone. Their stories with Larry are long gone with the passing of all of them. Although I have had many brushes with death myself, looks like I am living on to tell at least one of the stories here. And so I shall.

It was probably the mid 1970s. My Mom had picked up her pictures from the local drug store that developed them at a time when to do so would have been a great luxury for us. Polaroid photos along with the negatives came back in a divided envelope, printed with inserts naming all of the ways you could reprint your keepsakes for a fee. We never did. We just placed the 3″ x 5″ images in a shoe box for to put them in an album was too much work for a single Mom. Finding the old shoe boxes was like opening up a treasure chest in the bottom of our Mom’s closet, filled with memories of Christmas, birthdays, graduation parties, and more. The golden nugget for me was the collection from that Thanksgiving dinner at Grandpa and Grandma R’s house.

The house was so cloudy with cigarette smoke that family had to wash the walls once per year to remove the yellow streaks and stains that would build up on them. We never knew my Mom’s parents’ home any differently. My Mom smoked at home right at the kitchen table or when washing dishes at the sink. She placed an ashtray nearby with a third by the side of her bed. I don’t recall my Dad smoking but he would have been long gone somewhere else for decades after their divorce and before this: one of the last times we celebrated Thanksgiving at my Grandparents’ home. Glass or aluminum ashtrays graced my Grandparents’ black-and-white Formica table as well; a kind of family tradition of sorts. Sad, really. I retreated to the family room after all the dishes were done to get away from the fresh billows of smoke and noise. I don’t recall anyone else smoking, just my Grandparents and my Mom. With only so many places to go in that 3 bedroom ranch, there were still cousins and aunts and uncles everywhere. Eventually as our family grew, we would move our holiday dinners to My Uncle Larry and Aunt Shirley’s home for Thanksgiving; Christmas was always at our house.

My Uncle Larry must have either borrowed my Mom’s camera to take pictures or gave her that one photo of me some weeks later. I do recall him taking it. I didn’t want to look at him directly. Why would he be taking a picture just of me anyways with so many other kids around? I was wearing my brown corduroy blazer that I had made myself on my Mom’s Singer sewing machine. Sewing was the only way for me to get really nice clothing for special occasions. The rest usually came as hand-me-downs from Uncle Larry’s more affluent family. I guess they were just trying to help us out, my Mom being a divorced woman raising three kids on her own. No child support. At least from my Father, that is.

Friends had told me that I was pretty but I never had a boyfriend. Someone nominated me for homecoming queen and I declined to participate fully. My self-esteem had been destroyed by abusive events earlier in my childhood. Self-worth would come for me from what I could do, make, achieve, or accomplish so any recognition that I would accept would be the ones coming from those activities. This way of being actually became a type of addiction, becoming a “human doing” instead of a “human being” and yet it helped me survive the first three decades of my life. Then I found Jesus Christ and a measure of healing with a self worth that came from being a daughter of the King: my Heavenly Father and perfect source of love and acceptance, recognition and more. That is another story!

In the picture I had my hand over the right side of my face. Perhaps I was leaning on my cheek with my elbow on the arm of that recliner chair in which my Grandfather would take naps when we were little. The room was dimly lit as it was nighttime by the time we were done with dinner and dessert, dishes and too many bottles of Town Club pop. In that picture I saw for the first time in my life, a beautiful young woman. I had never seen her that way before. Evidently my Uncle Larry saw something too, worth capturing forever on film. I’m sure that I looked at the negative from which the photo was printed. Even from that strip of plastic, when held up to the light, I would be able to see myself for the first time from a perspective separate from my own inner struggles. Emotion had no say. There it was back-lit by the blue walls stained with time and their own stories. On Thanksgiving as a teenager, I was not lost but captured forever in a lovely pose amidst the mayhem of a simple family gathering. Gee, what if I had moved my hand, my Mother would ask. Knock it off Mom I would later reply silently. The composition was as it should be. And I was beautiful in it.

Thank you Uncle Larry for this memory that I will cherish forever. Almost 30 years later I found a love relationship that makes me feel like the day I saw the young woman in that photograph. You met my Steve a few times during fellowship with other family members and, I believe, have extended your approval of him, and of me both. You know that I have found my Intended Beloved at last. Steve is an engineer, a family man, car guy, and really smart, just like you were. Maybe you know that I have finally found a way to play the music intended for my life, with all of its passions that transcend the minutia of the days. He is the one, after my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who makes my heart sing!

Gentle Reader, my prayer for you is that you may re-capture a memory today in a beautiful way. And then run with it to your heart’s content! JJ