Emerson40
An evening spent dancing
- Joined
- Aug 27, 2012
- Posts
- 13,837
Earlier this week one of my reps held his sweet wife’s hand gently in his, as she slipped quietly away, forced to surrender to that cruel despot, cancer. Our lives it seems, have become very well acquainted with that unwelcome fucker, cancer, over the last couple of years. Enough is enough already.
It was discovered early last year after they’d returned from a short holiday, celebrating forty-five years of marriage. A routine visit to the doctor about a persistent cough led to an x-ray, which revealed a menacing dark cloud that darkened the film image of her lungs, and their thoughts and dreams over the next ten months.
This man has worked for the company I work for for close to thirty years. He was one of the first to welcome me five or so years ago, when I was hired to be his boss, and he and his beautiful wife became great family friends to us over the years. They are particularly fond of our children, and our kids love them to bits.
Family and friends gathered at their home yesterday, to celebrate a life. We nibbled small, triangular sandwiches, drank strong coffee, and picked at foil-covered casseroles and cakes. Guitars came out and we played and sang songs, my friend keeping rhythm remarkably well given the circumstances. After most had left, I sat with my friend and his daughter and we flipped through photo albums, looking at memories of lives remarkably lived.
I borrowed a photograph from an album, something I may use with the paragraph or two I will write, for our company newsletter. It really is an amazing photo. Not because of it’s quality - it has the look, colouring, and graininess of pictures taken with those little Kodak handhelds, with the disposable flash cubes - but because of it’s subject matter. It shows the two of them, arm in arm at a party of some sort, where the men are all dressed in suits and the women look like pretty birthday gifts, with their stylized, coiffed hair and colourful party dresses. I picked this photo because it reveals, in one quick snapshot from decades ago, the early days of their happiness and love, and the origin of the lifelong smiles that shaped the laugh-lines in their faces, and produced the twinkle in their eyes.
I am tremendously sad today, unable to compose a decent group of sentences that look professional, and doesn’t seem to convey my sorrow by their design.
I am away from my wife and kids, traveling for work, and sitting in this airport, I can feel every lonely mile of distance, tugging at my insides, pulling me towards home.
And I can’t stop looking at this photograph.
Fuck cancer.
It was discovered early last year after they’d returned from a short holiday, celebrating forty-five years of marriage. A routine visit to the doctor about a persistent cough led to an x-ray, which revealed a menacing dark cloud that darkened the film image of her lungs, and their thoughts and dreams over the next ten months.
This man has worked for the company I work for for close to thirty years. He was one of the first to welcome me five or so years ago, when I was hired to be his boss, and he and his beautiful wife became great family friends to us over the years. They are particularly fond of our children, and our kids love them to bits.
Family and friends gathered at their home yesterday, to celebrate a life. We nibbled small, triangular sandwiches, drank strong coffee, and picked at foil-covered casseroles and cakes. Guitars came out and we played and sang songs, my friend keeping rhythm remarkably well given the circumstances. After most had left, I sat with my friend and his daughter and we flipped through photo albums, looking at memories of lives remarkably lived.
I borrowed a photograph from an album, something I may use with the paragraph or two I will write, for our company newsletter. It really is an amazing photo. Not because of it’s quality - it has the look, colouring, and graininess of pictures taken with those little Kodak handhelds, with the disposable flash cubes - but because of it’s subject matter. It shows the two of them, arm in arm at a party of some sort, where the men are all dressed in suits and the women look like pretty birthday gifts, with their stylized, coiffed hair and colourful party dresses. I picked this photo because it reveals, in one quick snapshot from decades ago, the early days of their happiness and love, and the origin of the lifelong smiles that shaped the laugh-lines in their faces, and produced the twinkle in their eyes.
I am tremendously sad today, unable to compose a decent group of sentences that look professional, and doesn’t seem to convey my sorrow by their design.
I am away from my wife and kids, traveling for work, and sitting in this airport, I can feel every lonely mile of distance, tugging at my insides, pulling me towards home.
And I can’t stop looking at this photograph.
Fuck cancer.
