Never Forgotten

It started with a leak in the ceiling, which appeared shortly after the early pre-spring thaw. This lead to an investigation of the attic, in which I found a hole chewed through by a damnable red squirrel. He decided to take his chances in trying to stay warm in my attic. When I discovered his rigored body, I assumed he found the warmth was not enough.

After being kind and giving my furry, red interloper a proper burial, I went to work cleaning up the mess in the attic. I didn't get very far. The second wet box I tried to move had its bottom fall out. Hundreds of photographs fell out with it.

I quickly discarded the wet, cardboard shell and gathered up as many of the now wet photos and dumped the pile onto some towels to start the drying process.

Then I went through them individually, to savage them.

The first bunch were all of an old flame. A lover I hadn't thought of in years. I was actually surprised the photos even still existed. They were all innocent enough. Us or her smiling with other friends. Seeing her now, took me back to then.

Damn we were happy. Remembering the happy times almost blotted out the times that weren't. I was surprised how much the pleasant nostalgia flooded me, without the bad poisoning the memory. Perhaps time heals all wounds.

Even more surprising, the next bunch of photos were of my wedding day. Lucy would be devastated if we lost these, so I dry them extra, with extra care, just to be sure they were safe. How the hell the two sets got intermingled I will never know. Perhaps Lucy decided to put miscellaneous photos of me happy with friends with our wedding photos. Hell if I know. I know I didn't put them together, that is for sure. In my head it would be like dumping a chunk of sodium in water. Explosive.

And yet...looking at the wedding photos and letting the happy memories of that day, seemed to strengthen the happiness from the previous bunch. The one memory did lead to the other.

The next bunch, was even more strange. They were early pictures of my childhood. Me with my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. The tears in my eyes sting at some of the memories. I can close them and be right back in each moment. How the room smelled, how the laughter sounded. Damn red squirrel almost ruined them all.

And yet...I would have never had a reason to come up to the attic, let alone fine these particular photos, if it wasn't for my furry, deceased friend.

The more I dug through drying off the wet photos, the more perplexed I was about the mixture. The memories should not have found their way into the same box. The more I thought about it, the more it had to have been of Lucy's making. Even if I was at one point rushed when we were moving, I would have never had a reason to just dump all of these together.

The next clump, were all of my kids, my nieces and nephews. Baby ones all the way to how they are now. God! Where did all the time go? It has been as much as a blur as my vision has become with the now perpetual tears.

The last bunch, were the photos I took just because. Some of them I swear I never even printed. The places they took me back to. The moments of quiet solitude. The pretty woman at the cafe in San Francisco; The purple sky blanking mountains in Colorado; all the ones of the Painted Desert; all of the ones of the Petrified Forest.

The very last of that bunch made me stare in awe. They were of Amy. An old friend that convinced me to take up photography again after giving it up, because it was causing me a deep pain every time I touched my faithful Nikon DSLR. They were black and white nudes of Amy. I only printed them one time and she possessed them. They were gone with her, but they were forever printed in my mind. Amy was beautiful. Her soul was even more so and seemed to halo her body in the photos. They were art, pure as art can be. They were the only nudes I ever took. It took a lot of convincing to take them. It was the first time I ever saw her naked. It was the first time I truly saw her though.

She needed the photos to heal herself. The only person she trusted to do it the way she needed it done was me. That was why she got me back into photography. Well, her small, selfish reason for it.

The second time I saw her nude, was after I delivered the photos to her. She showed up at my apartment later that day, stepped inside, dropped her coat and there was nothing else there.

Before I could mouth anything, she put a finger to my lips, then she put her lips to them to give a soft, chaste kiss. Then she whispered in my ear, "I need to love the man that can see me that beautifully, just once..."

We were always just friends, but that afternoon we were something so much more. It was the only time. It was enough. It set me as much to rights as it continued to heal her.

The tears are flooding the attic more than the melted snow did. That memory lead to my last of Amy. Of holding her hand in the hospital room with a certain dread that her parents would not make it before she finally let go.

"Promise me," she whispered weakly, "that you will never give up your art again. It saved me. It helped make these last few months livable."

All I could do was nod. She was my best friend. I could never say no to her. The world was cruel for taking her.

"I'm not scared," she continued, her voice impossibly softer, "if nothing else, I got to experience what true love really tasted like in the end. My only regret is that I didn't find it sooner with you. You were there the entire time."

I found the courage to speak my mind, "Who is to say we didn't always have it? Our friendship been the truest thing I've ever had with someone else."

She patted my hand lightly, to calm me, "Only you would see it that way, my sweet old soul."

They were the last words to slip through her lips.

I do not recall how much time past before her parents arrived. All I do recall was how they held me as I still wept, them slowly joining in.

***

"Happy Father's Day!" Lucy proclaims with much fan fair. I am hoping her excitement doesn't wake the kids up. I was secretly hoping for a morning to sleep in. She drops a present on my chest that ways a ton. I gasp for breath.

I lift it off of me and prop myself up in a sitting position. "Wow! A Father's Day gift, sans kids. It must be something special or something wicked."

She laughed her sweet chuckle that I so adored, "You get wicked tonight if you are lucky. You get 'hopefully' special now. I am not sure what you will think, so I wanted to give it to you before the kid's woke just in case."

A bit curious, I ripped open the package in haste. My breath catches as soon as I see the scrapbook album. I am suddenly flooded with my memories in the attic months before. All of the pictures together suddenly make sense, save for the photos of Amy.

As I start to look through them, Lucy pipes in, "I hope you do not mind, I went through some of your boxes of photos to put it together. There was so much."

"I don't," I choke out, reliving the past and the time in the attic all over again. I take in each page very slowly. I can see her smile and joy at my reaction to her gift in my tear-filled periphery.

On the very last page, there is a picture of Amy. She is still draped in a sheet. Only her back is showing. She has her head turned over her shoulder with her hair both spilling and spraying. She is wearing her loveliest, truest smile. That smile saved my life more times than I could recall.

Below the note, was the beginning of a note, in Amy's hand:

"To the wife of my best friend, I want to tell you about the man you married. Perhaps something you haven't already figured out..."

I wept like a baby.

"She must have been amazing," Lucy said, in a voice that was filled with sorrow and awe, not a hint of jealousy anywhere, "I wish I had a chance to meet her. I am definitely glad she got you to take up photography again. All of my favorite pictures of the kids were done by you. Anyway, her folks sent me a box of stuff she wanted me to have a few months after we got married. I was going to give it to you right away, but Amy's instructions to me were clear. Anyway, most of it was for you...I am sorry if you are mad..."

I laughed and took my wife in my arms and kissed her.

The door to our bedroom sudden flies open, interrupting what I am about to say.

"HAPPY FATHER'S DAY! Daddy!", the kids scream. The oldest of the brood, Lucia then interjects, "Why on earth is Dad crying mom? What did you do to him?" Lucia forever my protector, a daddy's girl it the truest sense.

Before Lucy can respond to our daughter's accusation, I whisper in Lucy's ear, "The gift is perfect, you are perfect, they are perfect..."

"Your dad tried to get one of his presents early, so I hit him in the ribs," Lucy smiled and proclaimed in challenge, acting as if she didn't hear what I said to the kids but her smile was all the answer I needed.

"Geez Mom! It's father's day for goodness sake! He should get his present if he wants."

"Yeah, I should!" I interject, as a second on the point and then kiss Lucy with semi-mock passion.

"Ewwww, gross..." the younger ones almost all sing in unison.

Lucia comes over and actually elbows me on the other side, "Geez Dad, get a room!", she utters in an awkward way only a preteen can muster, "Maybe you deserved to get hit by mom after all."

"Technically, this IS my room, so you owe me an apology young lady..."

We were all smiling and laughing, tears forgotten; even Amy was, from her view from the page on the scrapbook, seeing the life I found.