I was sifting through some pictures and came across one I wasn't familiar with.
My father is sitting in his trusty old "Archie Bunker" recliner. He's still in his work clothes having finished another day of driving a truck around for I. Burack, Inc. delivering plumbing and heating supplies.
In his arms sits a baby -- a toddler -- probably less than 18 months old. It's 1970, the picture says.
It's a lifetime ago.
The father is gone. The baby, now grown, is typing away in the same house, maybe 30 feet from the very site of that chair.
That was the spot the father was sitting the night he died. The spot his wife was found 31 years after that when she died.
Oh I'm not trying to bum you out, dear reader. The memories are lovely and, often, painful. Thus ww deal with them as best as we can. They have to be compartmentalized somehow as if placing them in a filing cabinet. They sit in folders marked as such:
- Bad
- Don't Go There.
"Numb" is the word that came up tonight. Numb. No feeling. Not unfeeling but just no feeling, as if I want to feel but can't.
Believe me, I know unfeeling, but that's not who I am. I feel yet somehow it escapes me.
I explained tonight how I felt a few months ago, wanting to break down but my brain wouldn't allow me to because I feared being accused of doing it all for show and making it all about me.
Unhealthy, I'd say, but that's what happened.
And so, for the most part, the feelings remain repressed, tucked under the scattered pictures of the smiles we left behind.
The way we were, of course.
But that's just it. That was then and this is now. There's much to do. More pictures to create.
More stories to tell.
Keep.
Moving.
Forward.
And wouldn't forward -- armed with the memories -- be a nice way to move?
It sure would.
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