Snapshot.

Plenty of moments are fresh enough in my head that it's better than a photo.


Nowadays, we snap pics of everything with our phones and it means little...yesteryear, each picture had greater value because you had to DO something with it...you had to take the film elsewhere and wait anxiously for the pictures to develop. I remember wondering if I had taken the picture at the right moment, if I had captured what I wanted on film. There was an anxiety about the wait, and anticipation. Nothing digital, nothing immediate.

Those pictures I will always cherish, that's for sure.


But the ones that are most vivid are those that I purposefully and methodically captured with my senses...the smell of the moment, the sounds, the feel of fabric on my fingers, the imperfections. I have many of those photos stashed in the parts of my brain that haven't been eroded yet, and there's one that I would like to share with the universe, in case it makes a single ounce of difference in the balance of good and negative energy surrounding my Uncle Kenny, and his impending death.


My grandmother's table sat crooked because the floor sloped, in fact...it felt usually like the entire house sloped, but it was as much a place of comfort as it was chaos. My grandmother was still alive back then, and there was a smell of cooking hamburger lingering in the kitchen, mixed with the cigarette smoke from a mix of Salem Slim Light 100's and Kentucky Best. The house on Crawford-Day Rd was filled always with sounds of Aunts and Uncles and Cousins, back when there was familial gravity and we all convened in Mt. Orab at what then seemed like random moments.


I waited on my Uncle Kenny's lap for my cheeseburger, ignoring him and the smoke and all else that occurred around me. When he spoke, his voice was a sing-song mix of Cat Stevens and Bob Dylan...and just as unintelligible as the latter. His breath smelled like Budweiser, and his beard tickled the back of my neck. I felt nothing but peace and calm in the moment, sitting on my Uncle's lap, and felt very loved as his niece. I felt, in that moment, like my Uncle Ken would have done anything to keep me safe, even if it meant giving up his own safety, or comfort, or freedom.  It's one of the few times I have felt that.


It's one of my only memories of him, and its a very good and simple one. 


Tradition on the Whitaker side is to send along a picture in the casket of a loved one that has passed, so in honor of that long standing practice, I'm sending this memory along before he goes. Maybe it'll help pave the path upon which he is bound to travel shortly.



Skeptically Yours.


  Thank you to my dear and talented friend, Dustin Barclay, for letting me use this amazing song (off of an amazing album) for Uncle Ken.