Photographs of a Ghost

All of my old photographs smell like cigarette smoke. They were transported across the country in a large cardboard box the last time one of my sisters made the trip, rescued from the basement of the house we all grew up in, the house my grandparents bought in 1958, and then my parents bought from them in the mid-eighties.

There should be more photos — I know I’ve seen other photos that we’ve taken, but they’ve been lost to a disorganized life. I find myself looking through these photos after my mom called me to let me know my cousin Roseanna died.

Roseanna. I can still hear Rosie’s mom yelling her name in her southern drawl (Ro-ZANN-uh!!) after she did something aggravating or obnoxious or said something sarcastic. Rosie sauntering away, looking over her shoulder with that smug grin on her face. This was the soundtrack of my summer vacations as a kid, all in Tampa, Florida, more memorable than any song I used to listen to on the top 40 radio station in my sleepy Ohio suburb.

I’m looking through these photos and getting more and more angry that I can’t find any of Rosie. I find a bunch from my parents’ wedding, not in a photo album, just left in this box of nicotine-scented photos. I find so many doubles of stupid pictures. Here’s a barely in-focus picture of the ocean. Oh look, we have two of these. Thank God for that. There are a bunch from high school plays my sister was in, and also from her prom. Why are these at my house? There are some from when my mom was younger, which are lovely, but then there are others measuring approximately 2” x 2” and the people in them are microscopic and where the hell are my reading glasses and what on EARTH was my grandmother thinking, taking this photo?

I find three of Rosie. More specifically, three with Rosie in them. One is of my sister Jackie, maybe 6 years old at the time, on the couch with a couple of dogs Rosie’s family used to have. Rosie, probably 18 at the time, is sitting on the couch looking at Jackie and the dogs, wholly uninterested. Another is of me and Rosie and her sister Rachel as little kids, I think at their grandma’s house, and Rosie’s face is blocked. The last one is of me and Rachel, Rosie, and their brother Ryan, all at the beach, grinning at the camera, and we’re all out of focus.

Were cameras just invented, or what?

I’m so angry.

There are easily 500 photos in these boxes, and there is no evidence here of how much I loved her. How much I love her. There are no pictures to show anyone, to say “Look, this is what we were to each other. This is our story.” I’m left only with my memories, which are at best unreliable and at worst elusive, getting buried deeper year by year, suffocated under the weight of distance and time. We always lived far away from one another and even lost touch for years at a time, but as adults, we reconnected — really reconnected, coming back together like two lost puzzle pieces. And now I have nothing to show for it except this gaping hole in my heart that no one can see.

I was going to go see her. My wife had to go to Florida for business and saw her several times over the past few months and kept asking if I wanted to go with her, but it just felt like too much to ask someone to stay with the kids. “I’ll go on my own soon,” I said. That was in March. She died in April. Two days before her 48th birthday.

So. Angry.

I’m finally going to Florida, and for the first time in my life, she won’t be there. It’s a celebration of life, not a funeral — I can’t show up angry. It feels selfish to be so consumed with grief for her when she has left behind her mother and father who have now buried two kids, a husband who adores her, five sons, a brother and a sister, nieces and nephews, her grandmother, aunts and uncles, all who got to see her all the time and will see and feel and suffer her absence every single day. But if you knew her, you’d believe me when I say that even 2500 miles away, my world is darker without her in it.

The grief books (alright, podcasts) say to look for meaning. I’m not an ‘all things happen for a reason’ gal, I’m more of a ‘bad things happen because the universe is chaos’ gal. So I look for what I can control. I can take more pictures with my kids, so that they never have to go searching for me in photos with them after I’m gone. I can think about smile and her laugh, and how lucky I am to know her. How lucky I am to have been loved by her. I can nurture the relationships in my life. I can try to be a better mom. I can go see her boys. I can go hug her mom. And the next time I feel desperate to go see someone, I can find a way to take the trip.

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