Please, get in the picture

A daughter's longing for memories

Photo by James Schultz on Unsplash

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My mom, who passed away in 2022, and my mother-in-law, Joy, who died unexpectedly this year, would have been friends if they had the chance to know each other longer.

This isn’t a leap to say, because both had engaging personalities that made you feel like you already were their best friend.

They ended up spending time together just twice, the second amidst a gloriously chaotic Thanksgiving gathering. The first time was when their son and daughter, who had fallen in love just a few years before, treated them to a steak dinner on Mother’s Day.

It was a wonderful night, despite the deafening restaurant noise and the fact that these two women that we loved so much left most of their expensive meals behind because they were too busy laughing and talking to one another. (A lot of the questions were followed with “WHATTT???” because of the background noise, but they persevered.)

It was the kind of night that made me feel like everything would be OK, despite the fact that my mom was starting to require more care, and tended to forget more things than she remembered.

I even selfishly worried that Joy would not ‘click’ with my mom because of the accelerating disease that led her to repeat herself many times over, or tell a story from decades earlier without any context, leaving others around her either frustrated or searching for something to say that could bring the conversation back around to the original topic.

I knew within minutes that I would feel none of that tension between these two women that raised us. Joy was the least judgemental person I’ve ever known, and she didn’t miss a beat while bobbing and weaving through a conversation with her new friend, Pat. It wasn’t an effort for her, either. It was genuine interest, and love of her son and daughter-in-law, and excitement to have finally met this friend that could share the joy of being a mom watching their children form a family.

In the months since Joy’s passing, Joe and I have reminisced about how glad we were that we had that night, the four of us, laughing and enjoying the experience of our moms getting to know one another.

But we do have one huge regret: We don’t have a picture.

It’s one of those things that often gets overlooked when you’re in a moment that’s joyful, and engrossing, and when you believe that there will be many more opportunities. Because why wouldn’t you?

In the months that followed my mom’s death, I found some slides in her household boxes I had never seen before. I raced to get a backlight to get a better view of these long-forgotten memories.

It didn’t occur to me, until after she died, how little of her I had the chance to see in pictures before I was around. My mom was 41 when she had me; half of her life came before. I had seen her baby pictures, some school-age snaps, and her wedding album. But little else from a whole lifetime before I arrived.

In the box of slides were some of the most captivating photos I had ever seen. Pictures from her high school graduation, in her white cap and gown, with a smile wide and free from turmoil and stress that would mark her face later in life. I found a photo of her standing on the beach in Provincetown, Mass. the first time she’d ever left home: After graduation, when she was accepted to a summer stock theater program. I couldn’t stop staring at how beautiful she was.