PHOTOGRAPHS
By Brett Talley


She moved slowly towards the old mantle, a can of Pledge in one hand and an old rag in the other. Old age had slowed her movements some. She would admit that to anyone who asked, but she still kept the best house in town. It seemed that every day some part of it needed cleaning, and when the whole house had been dusted, vacuumed, mopped, scrubbed, waxed, and polished until it could take no more cleaning, it was time to start back at the beginning. She didn't mind. There wasn't much more to do around her home now that Jim had died. He had been a good man. She had been married to him for forty years. All those years of eggs and bacon for breakfast had finally caught up with him.



The mantle was not easy to dust. It was, in fact, completely covered in photographs. There had to be fifty or more there. Yet, the time it took to remove each picture and then to put it back in just the right spot was her favorite chore. For some people, photographs are just a mandatory thing to be taken at birthdays, award ceremonies, proms, and graduations - but not for her. For her they were a record of a lifetime, the only thing she could use to remember the past. You see, along with age came the tendency to forget, and not just forgetting the little things. Sure, it started out that way. First, forgetting that she had already put the towels in the dryer. Next, forgetting that she had an appointment that day. Then, forgetting where she last put those glasses. But finally, the things had become far more precious: where she went on vacation with her parents in the fourth grade, her best friend's name in high school, her son's birthday, even what the man whom she had spent forty years of her life with had really looked like. The greatest tragedy in life is when one forgets what that life was once made of. And so this dusting of the mantle became more than just everyday cleaning, it became a way to hold on to her past.



One by one she would lift the photos off of the mantle. The first was a picture of Johnny Mitchell, her high school sweetheart. Jim had often kidded her for keeping this picture. They had dated for two years and had planned to marry, or so they said. But he went away to college and she stayed at home and attended nursing school. They had tried to keep in touch, but time and distance changed them, and both soon found others to laugh and to cry with and eventually marry. Not that she regretted it at all. Her years with Jim had been as wonderful as she could have hoped. But still, sometimes she wondered, what if ?



Next, was a picture of her oldest, Jim Jr. He was a good kid and she and Jim had been very proud of him. He was wearing his uniform, Marine uniform that is. He had joined straight out of high school. He had wanted to serve his country. He had wanted to be a hero. He was a hero, even the preacher had said so at his funeral.



Then came another photo and another memory. This one of Jim and two friends he had from the coal mines. They were all smiles, their white teeth showing very well against their dark, black faces. Jim had gotten sick the day after the photo was taken. He hadn?t gone to work that day. His two friends had, and they were both killed when the shaft they were in, the same one Jim also would have undoubtedly been in, had collapsed and trapped fifteen miners inside.



Then there was a picture of her two other sons: twins. Both had graduated at the top of their class. One had been a doctor and the other a lawyer. The first was far too busy with his medical practice to visit on anything other than a holiday. The second came over more often, but not nearly enough. She had a thousand memories, a thousand moments, frozen in time in these photographs.



Finally, pictures of friends long dead, family far away, and moments even farther. Sometimes these moments came back to her. Each and every one equal an entire lifetime. The sum of all of her experiences were here on her mantle. But it was a picture not on, but above her mantle that interested her the most. It was an old photograph, taken long before she was born. It was old and yellowed with age, but still all the details could be made out with ease. It was a family photograph, taken on the front porch of an old wooden house. Two men with shotguns stood on the edges. The other men lined up in the back, the women in the middle, and the child in front. She only knew who a few of the people were in this photograph. The rest of them are forgotten to this world, their names having been lost along with the years. All of the time that they had spent here on this earth and no one even remembered their names. How many things had they done? How many lives had they affected? Where had they lived? Where had they died? All of this information is lost forever. It was as if they had never existed. Would she one day be as they are now? Would someone one day look at her photograph and wonder who she once was? Would everything she had done, everything she had lived, be lost forever?



She chuckled lightly. "It doesn't even matter," she said aloud to herself. These memories that she cherished so much, they were hers. And if they died when she took her last breath, that would be fine. All that mattered to her, all that had ever mattered, was that she would never lose hold of these memories while she lived. As she placed the last photograph back on the mantle, she knew that as long as she had them, she would never forget.



This story was by written by Brett Talley of Jasper, Alabama.



2000 Brett Talley

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