Celebrating A Life

A YEAR AGO, we lost my father in-law, a man who touched many lives besides my own. At the request of my wife and her sisters, I had the honor of putting together a photo book celebrating his life. While many hours went into it, I really can’t say it was work. I love sifting through vintage images and documents and reliving the stories they tell. This book hardly captures the complexity of his life, but it certainly keeps his memory alive for the people who loved him.

The Way We Were

A BLURRY SNAPSHOT summons a crystal-clear memory and a reminder that it is, indeed, the memories that matter. In it, my kids and I are perched on a large stone, a quiet stream barely visible in the wooded background of our campsite. Our sweatshirts hint at the crisp coolness that usually accompanied those outings, whether spring or fall. 

The photo was taken in the afternoon’s glow before sunset near the end of a fun weekend. Perhaps our smiles are a sense of relief that the hiking and other physical exertions were over, but I suspect that the sweetness of that moment is simply a manifestation of the love we felt in that bonding experience. It’s a memory mosaic, an image that captures the way we were before sports, school, teenage turmoil, and the digital revolution complicated life. 

• A full head of hair helps frame a youthful, healthy me, clad in my favorite campout hoodie. Dare I say — it might be the most handsome I’ve ever looked. 

• My son sports the chili bowl haircut that he insisted on during that part of his adolescence. Like mine, his face is healthy and relaxed. His hiking boots betray a young nature lover.

• My daughter is the centerpiece of the image. Her grip on my shoulders, the twinkle in her eyes, the purse of her lips — they all reflect what a daddy’s girl she was then.

That blurry, spur-of-the-moment photo takes me back to a simpler time when I didn’t insist on a certain perfection from my images, a time when making the memory was the thing that mattered.