My father had so little time with his parents: He lost his mom as a young child, and his dad when he was just 21.
As a kid for me some 20-30 years later, l never fully appreciated how difficult that was for my father. How many birthdays and death days passed that weighed heavy on his heart while I was wholly ignorant of his grief.
He’d talk about them from time to time though. Mostly sad stories that pointed to a rough childhood, but he’d also talk about how he wished his dad had gotten to meet my siblings and me. He talked about camping trips “up north” that were the highlight of his youth. And he’d talked about these videos that he and 2 of his brothers (and occasionally their father) had shot with an old 8 mm camera that were stowed away in his youngest brother’s basement. He’d sometimes bemoan the lack of photos of his parents — he only had one of his mom and 2-3 of his dad — and said he hoped to one day show me those reels.
But years passed. Decades, even. And he never got to show them to me.
Fast forward to 2020 when our whole world fell apart. After losing my father slowly for years to a devastating neurodegenerative disease, we lost him altogether in 2020 right as we were ramping up a fight to get my mom on a transplant list. She fought valiantly in the midst of a global pandemic; beat the odds; and made the list. And yet just six months after we lost my father, we lost her, too.
And nestled between their two deaths — the bookends of an unfailingly cruel year — was the loss of my father’s youngest brother.
We suffered through these losses, and more, at a time when the world was shutdown. At a time when funerals were delayed, and all potential outlets to distract from our grief were closed or unsafe, particularly as one doctor told me a trauma-induced illness I developed following the loss of my parents put me at an elevated risk.
But then, some light: My cousin found those old reels when going through her father’s things and took it upon herself to digitize them by hand. And when she was finished, she did something that was especially kind: She put copies onto thumb drives and sent them to all of the cousins. That 2-inch piece of plastic became the most precious gift.
For the first time in my life, I could see the home videos my father had talked about. And the thing that surprised me the most — the thing that made me the happiest — was seeing all of the love that had been part of his family life. I could see his own father laughing and smiling and walking and skating. I could see many of his siblings (and his own grandmother!) coming together for a high school graduation party. I could see his father pretending to cry as he waved him away to college. I got to see inside his childhood home and rode along with him on some of those trips up north. And much to my surprise, the reels spanned longer than I realized and even included his courtship and subsequent marriage to my mother. A trip to the zoo with my brother and sister as small children (a few years before I made my grand entrance into the world) was the last of the reels.
I watched one video after another awash with contradiction: sadness and joy, grief and celebration. Clarity to see some of my dad’s stories come to life; confusion at the numbers of faces and places I didn’t recognize. I was beyond elated to finally get to see these reels and yet: Devastated that my father wasn’t watching them with me.
But even beyond my family connection to these videos, there was something that resonated with my inner photographer: A certain artistry in how they captured angles, motion and light. A celebration of family, this planet, and life. A living, breathing history of a bygone era.
I asked my husband, who was midway into recording an album that was spurred by the loss of my parents in the midst of the pandemic, if he was working on any songs where these reels “fit.”
He responded “yes” without pausing and told me more about the song: “La esperanza nos está matando” (“The hope is killing us”). As he finished work on it, I set about taking 2+ hours of footage that spanned nearly 2 decades and whittled it down to 4 minutes and 40 seconds. It was no easy task — there is so much wonderful footage — but I kept my focus on the song, and the pacing, and with time it all fell into place.
And in more ways than one, honestly: My parents had been so proud to be featured on the cover of my husband’s first album. My dad often wore the shirt bearing an illustration of the cover, and they had the bumper sticker proudly displayed on their car. They mostly listened to 60s rock and country music and only my father spoke Spanish and yet: They loved that little Spanish-language shoegaze album and were among my husband’s biggest fans.
Featuring them in the video for a song about their loss, on an album dedicated to them, just made sense. And yet the video isn’t just for them: It’s for all of those we have lost and those, like my father’s parents, that we never got to meet. It’s for the family and friends who endured these losses with us.
And for those beyond our circle: The ones who marvel at the passage of time. The ones who trudge through the bitter to lap up the sweet. The ones that live and breathe the melodies of the world: The discordant — and the harmonious.
