The Photo Album

It was bound in a blue leather-like material. Twice the size of an average family photo album, it was beginning to split at the spine, cracking in places and exposing the brown of the cardboard beneath. The young man opened the book and flipped past a few pages. He found the page he was looking for, dated in scribbled marker at the top, 10/14…
The first picture was taken at a park. There was a young woman in her early twenties pushing a little boy on a swing. It seemed very sunny out, and the woman shielded her eyes with one hand as she looked up the little boy who was casting a shadow across her. She was wearing an autumn colored sweater, clearly indicating the cool temperature of the day. The little boy was bundled more heavily, in a winter coat and a hat. There were leaves scattered on the ground around the swings and underfoot.
A picture on the opposite page had, in its right corner a large black dog. The foreground, however, appeared to be a large red fence, against which a large pile of leaves had accumulated. The dog was panting, unaware of the photographer, and instead looking off to the side at something apparently more interesting to the left.
Below the dog was a close up picture of someone’s gloved hand against a fence. Beyond the fence was blurry, but the focus seemed to be on the hand’s entrapment behind the chain link.
Another photo seemed to have been taken at an Asian restaurant. It depicted a set of hands pouring sake from a small carafe into a cup. The hands seemed to belong to an older man, showing some signs of age, but still balanced with grace.
The man sat back in his bed, stuck in a pensive moment of his own construction. He thought back to that particular day, bringing himself back to the sunny cold middle of October. There was a particular feeling in the air that comes with that time of year, where clothing changes daily in New England from tank tops and skirts to sweaters and leg warmers. Sometimes eighty-degree days are decorated with pumpkins and littered with apple cider. He tried to capture this on that particular day, passing pumpkins on porches and piles of leaves, taking pictures of kids in leaves and tiny, gloved hands.
Over the course of his day he encountered women in scarves and boots with sunglasses, shivering in the cold while shielding their eyes from the blinding sun. By day’s end, some coats had been shed, and the lawns of the nearby campus had begun to fill with lounging students, grasping to a final day in the sun.
He looked around at his surroundings now, the beeping machines and monitors, the IV in his arm, the hospital issue sheets, and was eternally grateful for the opportunity to capture so much life on film. He was glad he’d had the foresight to compile this collection to comfort him in his final months. Now, alone in his hospital room he though about the little boy, who might be starting kindergarten this fall, and the dog, who might have had puppies. It made him a little bit happier to know that he had some sort of connection to the world outside, besides a small obituary column saying his name and that ugly word… cancer.