Kim Zschunke, Ben, John, and Betty, 2000.
It's well known to people who know it well, that an old person's wondering stare kills and my great uncle Ben seems to have mastered the technique.
This picture, captured at the funeral of my Grandmother in a church lobby, began a new chapter in my father's life. John, the name my father calls himself, stands strongly between his two elderly godparents, his hands firmly on their shoulders, comforting them, but as a constant reminder that as a member of a younger generation, will outlive them. A sad but honest reality that Ben and Betty now realize.
But John's smile tells more than the rest of him. For all my life I've been close to my father. He taught me more than I realize. His humor, his posture, what to do with my hands when I find myself bored. This telltale smile is another thing my dad taught me. His lips curl under and rise, giving his cheeks a lift as well making them puffier consequentially making his eyes squint. His tears for his deceased mother would roll forth if not for the camera for which he smiles.
But possibly, he tears for his own health. The onset of Alzheimer's has already claimed Ben's mind along with John's father, Don. With this, John thinks of his own ending as well. Ever since this day, my father fights the onset of Alzheimer's in fear of his own life but because he fears what he sees in his father and Ben. And I fight along side him. I have seen the horrors of old age and I fear it as well.
I know for a fact that Uncle Ben thought about his own death. I remember talking to him that day: his eyes glistened with tears but they were wide with hope. "Maybe I won't die," he thought. But alas at this moment, his inevitable demise sunk in, his head fell in defeat, his eyes focused on something unseen and distant. He tries to smile, but falls short of a smirk under the weight of his wrinkled skin.
Betty on the other hand, looks to her husband through her brown sunglasses. A punctum of sorts. It amazes me that she of all people would wear sunglasses indoors. Years play heavy on her body and she wears bright, outdated jumpsuits to funerals, I wouldn't think that she would wear glasses. Perhaps they are a shield, like my dad's smile, that block onlookers from seeing her tears if they decide to flow. But at this moment, she smiles with happiness and a certain pride that runs unmatched with Ben, perhaps for the life they lived together for so many years.
A famous person once wrote, "...in the photograph, I read an air of goodness. Thus the air is the luminous shadow which accompanies the body; and if the photograph fails to show this air,...there remains no more than a sterile body." It is this that I agree with Roland Barthes, that an air of goodness surrounds these subjects. Some family bonds rekindling from years of absence in memory of a fallen relative. You can find good in death, in a room with finger sandwiches and neutral walls. With both old and young people where ideas of the afterlife flow without words but are shared though the eyes of the wise.
I really like this photograph, if I haven't said so yet. But I find punctum in this photograph that I never even knew about when I was at the funeral. The way Betty holds her hands, crippled with arthritis. The way Ben stands straighter than an arrow. The way Betty's purse lies on the ground in the background. I hope John helped her put it down.
This picture will continue to be part of my life, not just because I like it, but because it reminds me of what I want love to be like. Wholesome friends and family, standing side by side, in times of sadness and death.
