A Light for My Path

Like most folks we took a group family photo after Thanksgiving dinner, and we probably will take another one Christmas day.

I love random photos that capture people at their most real. Doing something they love, laughing uncontrollably, genuinely surprised, or in a pensive mood. The subject of the picture often feels like it isn’t their best side, or they look silly. But, to me, when I look back at old photo albums or, more recently, at pictures posted online or on my phone, the candid photos give insight to the person’s thoughts and feelings at the moment. They may make me smile at an old memory or text them the pic and say “hey, remember this?”.

Still, we take group pictures because it’s hard to get everyone together and we want to commemorate the gathering. Kids and grandkids grow up so fast. It’s fun to compare this year’s photo to last year’s and see how few of them are still shorter than the adults. And try not to see the new gray hairs and so-called laugh lines on the grownups.

The hardest part for me, though is seeing the gap.

Someone unfamiliar with our family wouldn’t know what I mean. All of us in the picture are pressed together to get all thirteen or eighteen or twenty-five (depending on the holiday) in the frame. There’s no gap between anyone. It’s not evident that someone is missing.

Work schedules, illness, travel restrictions, competing commitments. Any one or more of these reasons can mean that any one or more family member can’t be at every family gathering. We miss doing puzzles with the bachelor uncle. We Facetime the great-grandparents who couldn’t travel because of bad weather. We remind the cousin who just started a new job that she needs to bring a double batch of her famous fudge next time.

But no matter how pressed shoulder to shoulder we are. No matter how many folding tables we added to the dining room. No matter how many air mattresses we put in the family room. I still see a gap. A gap in the group working on a puzzle. A gap under the tree where there should be a present. A gap in the place cards a grandchild is tediously demonstrating her new cursive skills on.

A gap in every family picture. A wife-, daughter-, aunt-, sister-, cousin-sized gap left by the same person whose last picture was taken at another family gathering. Her wedding.

A gap in time that gets ever larger.

Hers (my daughter’s) isn’t the first gap I’ve experienced, of course. I cherish family pictures that include my mother, my father, grandparents, friends. . . So many pictures that we didn’t know would be the last.

But that’s why I’m often annoyingly insistent on getting pictures whenever we have a family gathering. Even if the grandkids are cranky. Even if we’re hot and sweaty from a hike. Even if granddad is asleep in the recliner. And yes, even if I’m feeling fat.

Because I am mindful of the gaps. Not just the ones I know of, but the ones I didn’t know were coming.

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Laura