Hail, hail, the gang's all here

Front: Mom, Dad, Lois and Walt; center, AnnaMarie, Bernie, Anita and Nan; back, Robert, Don K., Rita, Don and John -- gathered in front of 3667 Enlow Road in Hebbardsville


The whole family didn't get together very often over the years, after we scattered to the winds. Maybe we just thought that we had more time, more chances.....before the day came when we gathered for Daddy's and Momma's funerals. I guess that's why Dad always wanted to know where "the tribe" was -- and what happened to all of us.

Mom talked to us on the phone far more often and kept track of everything we were doing, but I imagine that to Dad it seemed as if we had all just disappeared in the blink of an eye. And Dad didn't need to know all of the details. He just needed to see each of us, to size us up. It was the same whenever I moved: He had to come and see the place so that he could update the pictures in his mind. He told me not many years ago that I had to look in the mirror every morning so that I could keep track of what time was doing to me. When I told him I'd rather not watch, he hugged me and said if I didn't, it would sneak up on me. He knew what the deal was.

Dad needed the visuals. I think he played little videos in his head and pictured, in his own way, what we were doing. Mom enjoyed seeing us, but her lifeline was the telephone, our voices, the daily news of our lives. While Momma needs a cell phone with a toll-free number from heaven, I think Daddy needs a Hubble telescope, just so he can spot us down here and check up on all of us. He still knows we need to be watched over and warned to "be careful."

Now we have to keep track of each other and not let time sneak up on us too quickly. There's a lesson in this photograph: We all look pretty darn happy to be together.

(We need to put a date to this photograph. It was an August birthday gathering, I think -- maybe one of their 80th birthdays , which would make it in 1992 or 1993?)