Looking Back

Time doesn't heal anything.

Most of all grief. My grief is more like the seasons, changing every few months into something totally different. Familiar, but different.

1970. A family living the American Dream. My Mom knit each of these sweaters. We are sitting in front of our cottage on Wheeler Island in Three Lakes, WI. There is a Cadillac convertible parked in the driveway, and a boat at the dock. Here, all was well.

This was our holiday card that year.

Merry Christmas from the Clausen Family

Soon thereafter, we'd sell the place and my family would change in ways we could've never imagined. But for a time, this now-holy island represented the magical and wondrous things that life occasionally offers us.

Adventure. Tradition. Simplicity. Contentment. Legacy.

Like the green sweaters in the picture, I feel old and vulnerable to the grief lately. I find myself looking back more often than looking forward. Unpredictable waves of it maintain their pounding and swallow me up one occasional moment at a time. Will it ever subside? Not likely in this life. Time to push it away; to stuff it and get back to The Real Housewives.

Every family has a legacy of its own, imperfect and profound. It's flawed and beautiful and precious and disappointing and complicated and wonderful and mysterious all at the same time.

The three year anniversary of his exit inches closer. The cold weather carries the burden with a sharpened edge. In the shadows of my dreams at night, Dad lingers.

I see flashes of his face, hear snips of his laughter. I awaken and struggle to get back to sleep. I panic that I'm forgetting him: his eyes, or his smile, or his words. I remember the hospital room and the tubes and the fear. The neurologist who inexplicably cried as he told us it was hopeless. The days spent holding and studying the contours of his hands so I wouldn't forget them, all the time praying it wasn't over.

I lie awake, listening to the wind and ponder the lasting legacy of my flawed and perfect father. Sleep finally comes but morning doesn't erase the churn. Life maintains it's pace and I put on the armor that will sustain me, wrapped in the promise of paradise and a restored legacy that will live forever.

 

Masterpiece

Look closely at this one. Do you see it? It's in the eyes. Each of us has it.

Hope. Peace. A genuine sense of family. Of each other.

It's going to be alright after all.

We'd gotten Dad a new camera for his 50th birthday, the expensive kind. A Nikon. It had one of those self timers. So we had to use it for a picture Christmas morning. A family captured at their best. But for a moment.

We'd been through a lot as a family, and Christmas always represented a time of optimism. It was a season to reflect and refocus. To renew commitments. To realize all over again the value we had in each other as a family. Christmas always gave me hope.

They will be OK.

I've heard it said that families at their best are one of nature's masterpieces. If masterpieces are moments, or mornings, or holidays, this was one of them.

1982. All of us together, back from school and life and busyness, to celebrate Christmas. I like this picture because it reminds me of the goodness that often prevailed in my childhood. When parents break up, when families crumble, it's tempting to always reflect with a sense of sadness and loss. Not this day. This was a good day. This was a good moment. This was me, surrounded by a family I loved and who loved me.

Mom. Dad.

Brothers and sisters.

A family. Intact. Just the way it's supposed to be.

A masterpiece.