The Circle

Today I was visiting with my relatives from "Robin's side" of the family. I brought along photo albums which Robin's mother had owned and which had been in closet storage for years. There were many old family photos which I expected folks would like to have. Personally, I had gone through the albums last year and picked out a few photos of Robin to keep for myself - luckily there were plenty to go around.

I was only slightly surprised when my aunt suggested we look through the albums - sure, why not? A few turns of the page and I suddenly realized I was going to be reliving my past. There were photos as far back as my first visit with Robin's family. The grieving side of me stirred and I closed that door thinking "not now".

In my mind I remember portions of that first visit clearly. My niece Amanda was a toddler and my niece Alison was about six weeks old. There were the photos of me sitting on the couch feeding a bottle to Alison who I held in one arm - my forearm longer than her swaddled up body.

As we flipped through the old family photos I saw the faces of Robin, her mom and her dad - all of whom are gone now. How odd, it seems as if they were just here a moment ago and now they're nowhere to be seen.

I wondered in five years, ten years, twenty years which of us will have joined them, our forms reduced to memories and photographs.

As we perused photos at the dining room table, Amanda sat in the adjoining room with her infant daughter Lily. I stood and walked toward Alison who was facing away from me with her toddler son on her shoulder. In a flash my mind suddenly grasped the continuity for the first time.

I had entered the family when Amanda and Ally were the two young children (Nick wasn't there yet). Now they were each mothers. The two individuals who I'd met as a toddler and an infant were now at the family gathering holding their own children.

I felt momentarily stunned. So this is how it goes. Years from now the babies, Dillon and Lily, will likely be attending a gathering with their own children and us older folks will be the fading memories.