The Last Night

I had a whole memory card full of pictures which I was planning to write a post around. However, when I put the card in my computer, no pictures emerged. Since I had just looked at the pictures (on my camera) before going to bed last night, I figured that some weird thing had happened overnight and they had erased themselves. So I downloaded Recuva which does a good job of recovering photos that you are think are long gone.

But nothing showed up.

I went back downstairs to put the memory card back into my camera to see if, per chance, the pictures might show up there. And they did!

So then I figured something must be wrong with my card reader so I decided to take the memory card back upstairs and try to load the photos to my computer in a different way. However, ten minutes after I took the card out of my camera, it disappeared. Completely just disappeared!

Yes, it’s true. I have lost my (fairly) expensive memory card full of photos, one of which shows one of our church ladies putting mascara on Steve. (Dress rehearsal make up for our Easter drama.)

So since I am currently picture-less (and also short on time), I am pulling out a favorite vintage post for your enjoyment.

These old posts that include Nathan get more and more meaningful to me with each passing year that he is gone from home. 

Here are some sweet, sweet memories . . . followed a sweet, recent photo.

“Last Night”     (Written in November of 2009)

Last night the four of us grilled out hamburgers and hot dogs for dinner and then we watched a DVD together.

Last night. When I write those words, I really mean them in a whole different way. What I really mean is last night. As in final night.

After our movie ended at about 9 pm, I looked around the room–at Steve, at Nathan, at Sarah, at Snowy and I thought, “This is the last night the four of us will ever sit together in this room.”

And before I knew it, I was crying. From “funny movie laughter” to “moving trauma tears,” it was a dramatic emotional dive. And it’s not just that our whole family is moving to another house. That’s traumatic enough. It’s the fact that this is the last house we will ever live in as a family of four. From here on out, Nathan will be away more than he’s home and then, in the not-so-distant future, he will be gone from us altogether.

I sat in that living room last night and was so emotional about all the memories. And then Sarah, bless her female little heart, started crying too. With Steve and Nathan being empathetic, and Sarah and I both sniffling and Kleenex-ing, we all sat for about thirty minutes and shared memories, both good and bad.

Here is the star of the evening–the well used Kleenex box.

Sarah remembered that she had sat in that very room when Steve and I told her she had relapsed. We all remembered our tears (even sobs) when that unspeakable news came our way.

We reminisced about the times Nathan had gotten all dressed up to go to his school’s formals. We talked about the phone call I got in February of 2008 saying that there was a 90% chance I had breast cancer. We talked about birthday parties and sleep overs and how I used to come downstairs on a summer morning and see all the flip-flops and tennis shoes piled at the bottom of the stairs– that was the only way I had of knowing how many of Nathan’s friends had camped out in his room overnight.

We talked about the parties and dinners we’ve had over the years and reminisced about Sarah dressing up for two Daddy/Daughter Dances as well as her Honor Star Crowning ceremony. We remembered that Sarah was eight and Nathan was fourteen when they moved into this house and we talked how much they have changed and grown up since then. We looked back at Nathan’s 15th summer when he had mono and slept 12-14 hours a day for two months.

Nate and I also recalled a big talk we had in the living room a couple of years ago as he grappled with whether he should go to the local community college or to Southeastern University in Lakeland, FL.  After three hours of conversation I remember him saying, “I feel like I should go to Southeastern.” And what a life altering decision that has been for him.

After we had all been talked out and cried out I said, “Okay. The first person to get up and leave the room will close this chapter of life (all of us living full-time under the same room) and will usher in the new chapter.”

No one moved. No one wanted it to end. No one wanted to acknowledge that five years of life in our house in Smithfield was morphing into something different, something new, something unknown.

We sat in the silence and looked around at the room, looked around at each other, looked behind us, looked ahead of us. We reluctantly came to the realization that we couldn’t keep on reading a chapter that had already ended; we could only turn the page and find new memories on the new pages.

Steve slowly stood up. And then Nathan. They walked out of the living room, leaving Sarah and I behind. With the memories.

And the tears.

And the joy.

And the promise of new chapters and new last nights yet to be written.

And THIS is just one picture of just one of the new chapters that is being written–Nathan with his family-in-law, whom he has been making wonderful memories with for the past two years.

From left to right:  Nathan, Meagan, Frank and Sheri (Meagan’s parents), Kristen (Meagan’s oldest sister), Joy (the middle sister), and John. (Joy’s husband.)

The are many so more memories for the making . . . for all of us.