I’m not sure why things sort of pop into my mind from time to time, but they do.
I first saw “Peggy Sue Got Married” in Denver in October 1986, and while I have seen it numerous times since then, one particular exchange came to mind today.
Peggy Sue finds herself 25 years in the past, talking with her late grandmother. She tells her that since she died, the family never gets together any more.
I’ve used this picture before, but it’s the only picture I have that includes my four siblings and my four first cousins, photographed after my grandfather’s funeral. The entire top row and one person on the second row are all gone now. I suppose there’s a small amount of irony that as young as I looked in that picture, I’m the oldest person still alive.
I was 35 then, nearly halfway through the period between my failed first marriage and my wonderful second one. Oddly enough, none of the five of us in my family were married at the time and all four of my cousins had spouses.
There would only be one more time all nine of us were together, and there was no photo taken, the difference between a summer funeral and a winter one. Our grandmother, the great lady in the top row, died in March 1990, and maybe the most poignant moment came afterward. My cousin Pete, lower left in the photo, said it was sad that we were in a house that had meant so much to our childhoods for probably the last time.
Of course he was right.
I had the same feeling earlier this month when I flew north to Virginia and stepped inside my parents’ house for probably the last time. It was the house where I lived from age 13 to 25, and where I returned several times for Christmases with my wife and children in the 1990s.
And with our family spread out from Massachusetts to California, the times we were all together got fewer and further between. The last time we were together was May 2008 when we buried my dad. As I wrote recently, if the five of us are together again, it will likely be because one of us is being buried.
Sad? Sure, but my concern now with family togetherness is for my two children, their spouses and our six grandchildren. We were all together in April — actually for my mother’s funeral — because Pauline and her husband were in Virginia for language training before their posting in Tunisia.
If there is one thing I find sad about this picture, it’s the thought that the six grandchildren that I love so much will have their own turn, growing up and spreading out and no longer seeing each other regularly.
Everything passes, everything fades.
The black and white picture at the beginning is from nearly 60 years ago, and my cousins, my siblings and I are the youngest of four generations in the photo. It was taken the last summer we lived in Ohio.
My cousin Marti and I, upper right in the picture, were the first of our generation and both of us are past 70 now.
Everything passes.
Everything fades.