Gonna Take A Sentimental Journey

The photos.  Boxes and boxes of life stories captured in a split second. The Russian grandparents at 16 and 17, stony-faced, staring at the camera, afraid to blink. My grandfather in uniform.  A young married couple. A daughter arrives. And then my dad. Cute baby. Cute little boy. Look, he's playing street hockey in Brooklyn.  He's growing up fast. Here's his bar mitzvah photo. And the menu for the reception.  A big selling point:  "mayones."  

And now they're in Los Angeles.  The money ran out. Photos of the first apartment.  Life stories in boxes, everywhere I turn.  There's my mom as a little girl getting a big hug from her daddy.  Probably the last photo they took together.  He died in a car crash when she was five.  Photos of my mom and her brother, growing up in Chicago without a dad.  Raised by my grandmother.  Everyone on the beach getting too tan. My mom and her handsome brother on horses. Living a privileged life. And now my mom's in college.  She's a sorority girl.  She's got flowers in her hair. She looks genuinely happy.  Then life rudely interrupts.  The timeline stops.  No photos of the move to California. The money ran out.

Why does money do that?

Now I find the best stuff.  Except it makes me cry.  Photos of my young parents, before and after the wedding.  There's Jerry Lewis under the chuppah.  And a roomful of crazy radio writers overstaying their welcome in the honeymoon suite.  Look, the funny ones are throwing snowballs at my parents, instead of rice.

There's the first house, the one my parents built up on Beverly Drive. My mom is pregnant.  Here come the baby photos.  Baby butts.  Baby steps.  More baby photos.  An expanding family.  And then there are three.  Two brothers and the SJG. In every photo, I'm smiling and giggling.  

Everyone looks so happy in photos.  Maybe in that moment, they really are happy.  I like to think so, anyway.

Box after box, I watch myself grow up.  I watch my brothers get big and strong.  I watch my cousins, too.  Two young boys growing up without a dad.  History repeats itself in the strangest ways. All the joy and celebration, the sadness and grief.  And here I am, graduating junior high... high school... college.  My parents are getting older.  We're all getting older.  Getting married, too.  Having kids of our own.  There are birthday parties and vacations to exotic locales.  My parents in Russia and Israel, Greece and Italy.  Here they are on a cruise to Alaska.  All the trips to London to see plays. All the journeys they took together. All the fun they had. It's right there in the photos. Their love story.  Almost 50 year's worth.  Boxes of the life they shared.

Finally, it's too much for me to take.  I'm sobbing on the floor of my office.  Sorting through photos and more photos.  It's getting to me. I'm reliving every moment, every loss all over again.  I need to put a pin in it.  Put it on pause.  I make room in my closet for the memorabilia.  A scaled down version of many wonderful lives well-lived.  I'm not trying to open a museum.  I'm trying to manage insurmountable grief.  I'm throwing my own stuff away, stuff I've been saving.  Saving the way my dad saved everything.  Out it goes.  In the plastic bag and in the trash.

Outside, I hear the garbage truck pulling up to take it away.  It's time to let go of some things, whether I want to or not.