By Sarah E. Murphy

For as long as I can remember, the photo hung on the wall of the stairway in my childhood home in Falmouth Heights amid an array of other framed milestones.

It was taken in August 1976, and a small group of us are posed on the front lawn in front of 36 Grand Ave. I’m four years old, smiling widely for the camera. I can tell by my expression I’m thrilled that my “big” cousin Kendra was visiting from Colorado. Her dad, Uncle Billy, my mother’s brother and my godfather, is in profile, balancing my older brother Ted on his knee. My mother is holding onto my younger sister Courtney, and her beautiful smile belies the anxiety she is probably feeling, thinking about what to make for dinner, worrying the house isn’t clean enough, always trying to be the perfect hostess.

Kendra is holding Seton, the “Bicentennial baby,” who was three months old at the time.

Ted is looking at his little brother, who’s taking in the whole scene, quite intrigued by it all.

My eleven-year-old sister Joanna has her arms around me protectively, smiling shyly.

Little did I know then that fifty years later, on a sunny June day, Joanna would be driving me to Brigham & Women’s Hospital so I could see my dying husband in the ICU.

And that Kendra, her siblings, and my aunt would be there to support me during my husband’s cancer journey, beginning with a diagnosis just four weeks after losing my mother.

I’ve never thought about who took the photo until now. Was it Billy’s wife, my Aunt Lucy, or my oldest sister Nina? Maybe it was my mother’s oldest brother, Uncle Leonard, the family photographer on Mom’s side of the family. If so, my unbridled enthusiasm could also be indicative of his signature directive to “smile for the West Coast audience!”

When the painfully inevitable time came to clean out our family home, I gratefully accepted the photo when it was offered to me.

It’s always been one of my favorites. A frozen moment in a much simpler time. It also captures the joy I always felt when I was surrounded by my family, the proverbial more-the-merrier.

I recently found a 4×6 version, with a caption on the back in my mom’s  penmanship reporting Uncle Billy enlarged the photo for her, and she was having it framed. “Unfortunately, Courtney chewed the orginal,” she wrote endearingly, which gave me a much-needed smile.

I want to climb into that photo and hug that four-year-old tightly. My precious little face, so innocent and sheltered, brings me to tears. I want to warn that sweet little girl about the profound trauma she will one day face which will ultimately change everything, including her sense of security and identity.

I wish I could convince her that none of it is her fault and that she deserves happiness, just like everyone else, but I’d feel like a liar. I’m still trying to convince myself.

I’m the “fortunate” one who gets to live on while my husband would give anything for that luxury.