A new relative we just added into the extended family just found out he has a malignant brain tumor. Metastasized. He has young children.
A young man my son met through their internships in DC turns out today to be Marc, the son of a friend whose husband was killed in an accident just after they moved away from here back when Marc was in I think kindergarten. I lost touch with his widowed mom when she moved the second or third time and have wanted for years to get a chance to reach out again and talk to her.
My son called in great excitement to tell me, not waiting for me to get to my email for him to share the news. Marc emailed just now that his mom was just as excited as I am at our all finding each other again. Synchronicity is wonderful stuff. And he mentioned something to me about his wife–while I’m struggling to picture the little boy as the grown man. Wow.
The day his family moved away, a number of us at the young-child stage got together at their apartment on Stanford campus, where Bryant, his dad, had just finished his PhD, to box and scrub and watch kids and help out. Anything to lessen the pain of their moving. Bryant bought us all pizza at the end of the day, a rare luxury for us all, and we sat or stood under the scrawny pine trees just outside their door they were about to close for the last time, reveling in the friendship with the poignancy of loss that they were leaving. How much Bryant was going to, just a few months later, we could never have known.
When Bryant died–he was a pedestrian, struck by a passing car–there was a tremendous need here to do something. We their friends here got together with one person setting up a video camera, and shared our stories of their father’s kindnesses from people the boys would likely not even remember when they grew up. So that they had something to remember Bryant by, so they would know the kind of man he was, so they would have his good image to live up to.
So their father would be real to them. Compassionate and human.
Marc marveled that I remembered his brother’s broken leg. I marveled that he remembered any of us at all. But he did. But then… Maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised.
Get out the video camera, take out the tape recorders. Write up questions to ask. Get the older folks talking about back in the day. Their children and great great grandchildren will cherish every word.
Meantime, I’ve definitely got some knitting to do.