They were people, too

I had forgotten how attractive and beautiful and full of life and love they were. As I write that, I realize ‘forgotten’ is not the right word, “never knew” is more accurate. I’m talking about my parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents.

My cousin who’s the family archivist, was visiting from Chicago. We had lunch together. After lunch he opened his lap top and showed me some very old home movies his dad had taken. There I was at ten. That was interesting, but the real revelation was how his mother and father, my aunt and uncle looked. He was handsome and she was beautiful, actually sexy and attractive. Same was true for my mother and father. All of them were attractive and beautiful and full of life and love.

I don’t remember them that way. I never really knew them that way. They were always the parents, aunts and uncles – not people. Of course I’d seen pictures of all of them as children, young adults and parents, and I knew they were different. But yesterday, seeing those movies on the lap top, I got viscerally, perhaps for the first time, that they were people, just like the ones I work with, see in the grocery store and in restaurants.

How sad and how cool. I remember my dad, 83, dead in his chair in the living room. I remember mom, 82, dead in the hospital bed. I remember them in other ways too, of course. But now I will also remember them as people, attractive and beautiful and full of life and love, raising me and my brothers to be the fine people we are.