Kimra Traynor Herb

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Streets
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Kimra Traynor Herb
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Framing the memories

Sometimes life can teach you lessons in a way that can leave you squirming with shame. For me, this week, it was the school photo frame. Let me explain. Twelve years ago, when my oldest son was ready to begin school, my husband bought two school photo frames for my two oldest boys. (Number three was a dream yet to be dreamed at that time....). When he showed me the frames with the little oval windows for each grade, framing the large center photo for the senior year, I immediately burst into tears.
"I don't want him to start school!" I sobbed, near hysteria at the thought of putting even one picture into the frame. "He's too little; I don't want him to grow up and leave me."
And yet grow up he did. Starting with that first picture of my oldest son in his little red bowtie and tiny little red sweater, he sequentially aged in the photos. Year by year I would add a new picture to the frame for both of my boys and then finally, my third son had his own frame which began to fill up as well.
Always I would weep at the adding of a new picture. "I can't stand this!" I would wail, as I put the scotch tape on the back of a new, older looking picture of my boys; the reality of the time passed in the frame on the wall. Try as I would to get a grip on reality, the school frame was a source of constant pain in my life; it was a visible reminder that my boys were one day going to leave me for their own lives.
All my friends and my husband grew nervous around picture time. Everyone, I mean EVERYONE who knew me knew that adding that new picture to the frame was a source of major emotional undoing for me and that at any day; I could snap.
We were all afraid for this year. This year, my oldest son is a senior. When he had his senior pictures made, I knew that that large oval in the center would soon be filled and time would have run out for the raising of this child. Tears like I had never shed at the photo frame were hovering in my head; the pictures were yet to be delivered.
And then life taught me that lesson that left me shaking with shame over my ungrateful behavior.
Tuesday night I received a phone call from one of my son's friends that my son's best friend and his girlfriend had been in a car accident. Incredulous, I asked him if they were okay.
"Mrs. Kimra," he sniffed, "I heard she had died."
Naturally the world stopped spinning for a moment as I let the words sink into my brain. But surely there was a mistake- she was just seventeen years old; bright, beautiful, talented, and the love of my son's friend's life. Surely there had been a mistake.
Sadly, it was not a mistake. Our whole life was propelled into grieving; the girl had been a precious friend to all three of my boys and very much on the scene around the Herb household. Poker games in our basement; movies filmed starring my son, his friends; all featured her prominently. Gone?
Tragically, yes. And though no explanation in the universe could explain this; we went to the funeral home for the visitation. A casket with the body which had once housed a vibrant young girl; just seventeen years old, and among the wall of flowers and grieving family and friends, the school photo frame- completely filled- her senior photo just recently added lovingly and with such anticipation (and maybe a few tears) of a future left unfolded.
"Look." My husband poked me. "The school photo frame." And then it hit me; I was perhaps the stupidest, most ungrateful woman on the planet to be shedding tears over a future fulfilled when this family had been robbed of that opportunity and had only photo memories to keep them company.
I can't say that I will be squealing with glee when I add my son's photo to finish the school photo frame in a few weeks when his pictures arrive. I have too much invested sorrow in the process to change that drastically. However, it will be with a warm and grateful heart that he is still with us, forging into life full-forced that I will add that picture and thanking God for every minute I got to be his mother.