There they are. There they were. Just how I imagine them, when I think about my parents and our family as it was when I was growing up. Funny thing #1: they were considerably younger in this photo than I am now.
I took a picture of the picture with my phone, and I put it on Facebook. I wanted to show my mom and my sister, yes, but also - I wanted to show everyone. Just look at them, would you, all of you? Aren't they marvelous? Can't you just hear them and smell them and feel the joke someone is about to crack?
I went to an all-day training yesterday on trauma and attachment. The presenters used videos of actual sessions with couples and families to illustrate the principles of their approach to healing from trauma and the disruptions in attachment that can follow. They advocate an experiential approach, and it was incredibly emotional to watch clients, especially children, open up to pain in order to begin to trust and love their family members. I couldn't help crying as I watched parents hold and caress their children (in both cases, the children had been adopted and experienced early trauma) for the very first time.
I think every therapist in that room felt stirred, and surely all of us were thinking not only of our clients, but of our parents, our spouses, our children.
I was aware of an underlying sense of bittersweet gratitude. I could not help thinking of my parents. I was not an easy kid, and surely they made mistakes. But they were always there. I never doubted their loving presence for a single second, even in the midst of the nastiest tantrums and the worst adolescent behavior. Their unconditional love carried me through a lot, and it still does. When I find the inner strength to resist the lure of a superficial yet heated fight with Frances, while staying put, while exercising patience and love, I know my dad's steadying hand is on my shoulder. (I won't get into the fears about my own parenting - all the times patience fails me and I yell or stomp off - that the training stirred up as well.)
After I put that photo on Facebook, I thought to tag my mom; all her people should see how marvelous she and my dad were on that chilly day, too, right? (Marvelous upon marvelous: she knit the sweater.) After I tagged her, the little white box framed my dad's face, and the "type any name" prompt appeared below. Huh.
It happened so unexpectedly, this other funny thing. I saw his face. Facebook invited me to tag him.
Wait. Dad. ...Are you on Facebook?
As in: have you been here all this time? If I type in your name will you appear? Have you been busy liking and commenting and I just never thought to look for you before now?
Oh, my friends. Such disorientation. I found my footing again, just a fraction of a second later. But does death ever fully lose its absurdity? Would we even want it to? It's too strange to make sense of.
The nice part was that even after I found equilibrium again, I felt closer. Maybe I told him about what happened, about my momentary confusion and hope, and I could almost see and hear him, smiling at me (the smile in the picture!) and sighing:
Babe, I've been dead for almost nineteen years. I'm not on Facebook.
I sure do like that picture you put up, though.
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