This is one of many compositions that came in the middle of the night when I could not sleep because my husband had died. As I said in my first post--Life is truly a tapestry, and the loss of a loved one can be one of the darkest moments in that picture. So, capture great moments with your camera and in your mind's eye. Your memories can sustain you and help you recall what was good and a blessing.
Captured Moments
The pictures progressed frame by frame as the Glenn Miller tune, “Moonlight Serenade” softly played. I have always agreed with those tribal groups who were reticent about having their photographs taken. They got it right—pictures did steal your soul. Many cultures have had this belief--that taking a photograph could steal a person's soul and was disrespectful to the spiritual world. At this moment I believed that to my very core.
My husband's face slipped by, another frame, and the slide show tune changed to “Sleepwalker,” then “City of New Orleans,” and finally, our favorite song, “If.” A whole life captured in a series of photos. I could see him grow up as each frame advanced. They flowed--the early pictures of a couple in love, with our new baby, with friends, and on trains, on vacations, and finally with our beloved granddaughter. I was so happy that a family friend had helped to compile all these slices of life into an array of photos. Oh, how sweet it was and how very sad, all at the same time.
The pictures were mostly of a robust guy, sometimes an overweight guy, but always my love, my everlasting love. It had been a good life that ended too soon. It had been a love to end all loves, forged on a fiery crucible of what seemed to some like a soap opera.
But you could only know what had happened if you had walked in my moccasins, I was the Juliet of this whole thing, and I knew. I remembered it all—the good and the flip side. The memories all flooded back to me now with each picture’s magic.
“Stealing a soul” was exactly what had been happening to me and my small family over the last hellish months. The word “steal” was just the word, as something precious had been snatched from us, never to be returned again. There was no police officer to call, no court of appeals. With a death there was only Divine Providence, and right now I was upset with the Divine. I even admitted as much to my pastor. He called one day after the memorial service and asked me how I was doing. Never one to hold back (probably one who tells people way too much) I answered that I was hurt, confused, and mad. “Are you mad at God?” he countered. I said “yes, somewhat," and he replied that “God could take it.”
I was too upset as I watched the slide show for the first time since my husband's death—too upset to figure it all out. The pictures had me confused, for there he was captured at all those cherished moments, looking so full of life. Yes, it must be some kind of horrible curse and yet a blessing, too, to have all these “stolen moments.” Then, the last frame and still no answer came. I would just have to be like that tainted heroine of Southern women, Scarlett O’Hara, and think about this “another day.” But indeed I knew I would think about this all the days of my life, for my “other half” was lost and I must learn to function without the part that had completed me for so many years.