This, obviously, is a photo of my immediate family: my father, my mother, my brother and me in France in 1972. We are sitting in one of the windows of my grandparents' country house.
The dry-mounted photo, an 8 X 10 taken with the timer on an analog camera (obviously), leaned against the wall above my parents' bed for a good twenty years, and before that, was also on display (where, I can't remember exactly) in their larger apartment before they downsized to their place downtown (I am referring to New York City).
When my father died a few days ago, after a long and steady decline, my mother, normally very stoic and strong, broke down as she gathered framed photos resting on a bureau that my father had been able to stare at from his bed. She handed them to the undertakers so that they would place them in the casket. Once my father's body had been taken away, I took a photo of this photo, which was left in its place behind the bed, thinking that posting it on social media would be my gentle way of alerting my friends about my father's passing.
Reactions were positive, of course, including the one that I used as a title to this blog entry: "Great family photo." Other comments included "extraordinary family," "what a great picture" and "wonderful evocative photo." My "favorite" comment came from a colleague who wrote, "I hope you have beautiful memories of those family times" to which I responded, "it depends on the photograph."
Anyone who has studied family portraits knows that they tell an idealized story, one that is often different from the real story.
The real story. What is the real story of a family? As memories came pouring in about my father, I wondered who this man was that they are describing and what kind of family we were. Tolstoi wrote famously, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way" (thank you Google). Why wouldn't that be true for ours?
The "real" story behind this photograph. I can only tell the one I remember. My clothes date the photograph well. As archival material, it is telling of an era when clothes became noticeably ugly and weird. I was definitely entering an awkward age, the expression on my face might reveal that somewhat. As for the story it tells about my family. Clearly, my parents make a handsome couple. My brother seems at ease and happy, but one can't really tell for sure.
What that photo does accomplish is a portrait of the perfect family.
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We had to assemble another story when my father died, namely the story of his life for the obituary. It turns out that one can turn out several obituaries, depending on where it will be published. For the New York Times, though, we needed the "official" one. Without going into much detail, survivors really need an outside person to weigh in on that story. Luckily, we had a friend and colleague of my dad's to play that role. It's amazing how the death of an important family member (important? aren't all family members important?) brings out individual versions of what we felt about them, and those versions do not overlap neatly.
I googled, "why families squabble when..." and the Google gods finished the line with "someone dies." Ah, yes, the squabble over the family estate. That seems to get the most hits. But there are others reasons why family members begin to yell at each other over the wording of an obituary. Mainly the stress associated with the loss, but also, and this is me (with backup from much psychological babble I'm sure), the release one feels once that person is gone that ensues in a more genuine, less mediated and suppressed, impression of that person. Meanwhile, the survivors are pressured to perform the perfect, unified family that loved and venerated its deceased member, at least until the last sympathy card has been opened.
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The inscription on the tombstone that my father had wished for needed to be located. My mother's attempts to locate that wording failed, so I had to call my partner back home, ask him to look for a file labeled with my parents' initials (my father was meticulously organized), which he did, and in which he did indeed find the words that my father had noted for his tombstone.
I want my father to know that I did look after his dying wishes, in a small but significant way. I am not nearly as organized as he is, but at least I try to be, at least for the important stuff.
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We are not perfect, not even close, but we do manage to pull off the important stuff.
I am with my mother for a few more days. Her housekeeper for thirty years, Vicky, my mother and I toasted to my father and to good health (much needed right now) with a glass of wine. Wine was an important part of my father's life. In the kitchen drawer, there are three types of corkscrews. All three have always given me trouble. My mother started opening the bottle, got the spirally thing all the way down into the cork, and then handed me the bottle because she didn't have the strength to do the pulling. Luckily I did.
