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By Root 384 0

of family photos in their shining silver frames, gracefully arranged across the grand piano that Sarah used to play so beautifully. I picked up Sarah’s graduation photo and studied the self-satisfied smile that played across her sweetly curved lips—as if she knew she had it all together. Her hair had still been long back then, gently floating around her shoulders as if she hadn’t spent hours trying to get that tight natural curl to relax a bit. But there was a look in her eyes that didn’t quite fit with the rest of the picture, or maybe it was my imagination, but she looked worried. Maybe she had still been fretting about her grades when the photo was taken. For a short time she’d been concerned that Amanda Frazier would beat her out for top honors at graduation. But that hadn’t happened. Or maybe she’d been worried about something else. Something I had missed because I’d been focused on Jacob. A small stab of guilt punctured my mothers heart, and I set the photo down and reminded myself that Sarah’s life was on track. She was excelling in college, making new friends, and seemed to be in complete charge of everything.

Not that I didn’t regret how her visits quickly diminished as Jacob’s troubles began to increase. But sometimes I thought that Jacob’s problems were simply Sarah’s excuses for doing something else—something that would further reinforce her independence.

“You seem to have your hands full with your son,” she’d told me shortly before her last spring break. “I think I’ll just go down to Grandma’s or maybe hang with my friends.” Naturally, I’d expressed my disappointment, but I didn’t encourage her to change her mind since it seemed our family life only grew more stressful when she did come home. Sarah wasn’t unlike her father, with her lectures about how Jacob needed to shape up and how I was a hopeless enabler. And her platitudes only seemed to make matters worse. As much as I loved my daughter, I knew she could be a royal pain at times. As it turned out, more and more Sarah had opted to visit her grandmother in Arizona during holidays.

My mother had moved down there less than a year after Sarah had started college and Jacob had started to become a handful. It was a double whammy for me—losing the support of the two females I’d been closest to—and I felt it contributed to Jacob’s problems as well. I felt he missed the attention of his only living grandparent, but then my mother had never been much of an expert at timing. Like when she’d divorced my dad shortly before he died. Of course, we all knew he’d been having an affair, but we didn’t know he was about to have a fatal heart attack. The ink on the divorce papers was barely dry before he keeled over in the arms of the “other woman.” Fortunately for my mother and us, their life insurance policies hadn’t been changed yet. That was a bit of luck that we all still shake our heads over. Even so, we kids were devastated to lose our dad. But it was maddening, too, because even in our grief we were all still angry at him for cheating on Mom. As a result, it was a very strange funeral, and I sometimes wonder if I’ve ever really completed the grieving process for him.

I peered at the old-fashioned black-and-white picture of my parents, taken on their wedding day just after World War II had ended. My dad had on his army uniform, and my mom wore a white satin gown she had sewn herself. They looked so incredibly young and naive and happy, with absolutely no idea their lives would take such a sad twist in the end. Who ever knows how things will end up?

Then I picked up the silver-framed photo of our family. We’d had it taken shortly before Sarah graduated from high school, when Jacob was just a sophomore and doing okay. Oh, life had been relatively easy and full of promise back then. I’m just not sure we ever knew or quite appreciated it. It’s like they say: you don’t miss something until it’s gone. Back then, Geoffrey constantly pressured the kids to do and be their best. Not that I didn’t agree with this, mind you. Everyone should be the best he can be. I’d just never