Amber Moment

Amber Moments

"Yannah came in and turned on the news to see if they would say anything about Becky's dad," my mom says. Before this statement, her voice sounded distant, not because she was unemotional, but simply so bogged down in stimuli that she couldn't give in yet. The façade begins to crack as she says this.

Aside from my brother Dan, none of us were especially close to Becky’s parents. We saw them at family occasions at my brother’s house, at New Years Eves and birthdays. Her father was usually in a chair in the corner, serving as gym equipment for his three mobile granddaughters and a chair for sessile Alyssah. He was only fifty.

I can't get this image out of my head; my two nieces staring at the TV, watching the general carnage of the nightly news in utterly futile hopes that there would be some mention of their grandfather, Leelee repeating that she hoped he would get better. My mother knew he was dead when Becky and Leelee found him. They had gone to his house for a barbecue on the first truly gorgeous day of spring, a day I spent with Emily in Great Barrington picking out wedding bands and being in love. Leelee, only five or six, had poked her grandfather and seemed baffled that he wouldn't be roused despite having one eye half-open. I am grateful she is still too young to have fully grasped the drama in which she momentarily starred.

Read the rest at http://www.xenex.org/journal/20070424.php

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