Impossible Things

We’re putting together a photo montage (slideshow?) for Michael’s memorial on January 31st. The weight of it feels like gravity on Jupiter… so much heavier than what our bodies on this planet are used to.

To go through thousands of photos and choose the ones that say “yes, this one really represents Michael’s life” and fit them into a five minute segment is a silly exercise. What I want to do is sit down next to you for hours and go through each photo, one by one, tell you the story of where it was taken, what we did right before and right after, and why it was important to save that particular photo. Even more than me telling you about each photo, what I really want is to sit next to you with Michael himself so he can join in the storytelling.

We did that, Michael and I, just before he went into the hospital for his bone marrow transplant. We put all the photos of our European Christmas market adventure from a year ago on the television, snuggled up on the couch, and slowly clicked through each one. We laughed and sighed while reliving the incredible memories we made together, feeling overflowing awe for the precious time shared during our dream vacation. That time on the couch this summer was the inspiration for my gift for him this most recent Christmas — having our wedding video digitized so we could watch it for the first time in nearly thirty years. I could barely wait to surprise him!

How is it possible that Michael did not survive until Christmas, that he never got to see it? That we never got to share the memories of our wedding day one more time while watching our baby-faced selves make lifetime commitments to one another?

We were right in the middle of the most extraordinary life together, Michael and I. While my perpetual inclination to constantly document the people in my life (sorrynotsorry to everyone I’ve ever forced into a group shot) means I have an abundance of photos to choose from, what I really want is more of that extraordinary life.

The notion that Michael and I will make no further memories together, take no further photos together, is incomprehensible. Inconceivable. Absurd. I laugh at the ridiculousness of it, then immediately cry in despair because what do you mean I have to take an entire lifetime of photos, pick only a few, and then hope somehow they will effectively communicate to the world just how spectacular and beloved Michael was to me?

Impossible.

More soon (after finishing the impossible task of choosing photos).