Easter, 1955

Sunday was always a special day in our house. But Easter Sunday was in a world all its own. It had the holiness of Christmas, without any of the commercial marketing.

In 1955, my sister, my older brother and I stood for an Easter Sunday photo in the new clothes our mother had made for us to wear to church that day: a new dress for Candy, new sweater vests for Todd and me.

In the photo, Todd is carrying his ubiquitous book (a voracious reader from the age of three, he was never without one), I am clutching my Easter basket, and Candy has a maternal arm around each of us.

We didn’t know it then, but it would be our last Easter together.

Todd was born with hydrocephalus, an imbalance in the cerebrospinal fluid that causes a buildup of fluid in the brain. Depending on the severity of the condition, this buildup creates pressure in the brain and causes an enlarged cranium, poor physical balance, and a compromised immune system. Today it can often be treated by surgically implanting a shunt to drain the excess fluid and reduce the pressure on the brain. But this technology wasn’t available in the 1950s.

Eight weeks later, on another Sunday morning, Todd hadn’t come to breakfast so Candy went to wake him. She came back to the kitchen and told our parents that Todd wouldn’t wake up. We all went to his room and found him in bed. A slight cold or congestion had apparently developed into pneumonia in the night and he died in his sleep.

Several years afterward, we moved to another town in Southern California. Then, many years later, Candy’s family, my family, and our parents all moved separately to Washington state.

Now, Candy and I are the only ones left of our 1955 nuclear family. In the weeks leading up to Easter Sunday 2022, my wife and I visited Southern California. While we were there, we also visited Todd’s grave.

I’d been thinking of him a lot. It didn’t feel right that he alone remained in the town where none of us had lived for more than 50 years, a thousand miles away from those who knew him. Candy had felt the same way for many years, and we had begun talking about bringing him home to Washington to lie with Mom and Dad and the rest of us when our time comes.

So we did. It took a while, but in September of 2024, my wife and I flew to Southern California and brought Todd’s ashes home to Washington. A week later, the family gathered at the cemetery where Mom and Dad and Candy’s husband are buried, and laid Todd’s ashes next to the others.

Todd has come home to a place he never saw. But he’s in the arms of his family again. It’s where he belongs.

A few months before that last Easter we had together in 1955, my mother took a picture of Todd and me in our backyard. Many years ago, I wrote a song based on that photograph. Candy asked that I sing that song as part of our little ceremony in laying Todd’s ashes to rest. Here are the words:

Amber Glass
Holding to each other’s hand
for a mother’s loving eye,
Captured in a photograph,
an amber glass in time
And there we stand unfaded
by the years that hurry on,
My brother now departed
and I become a man.

The pleasures of a two-year-old
seem greater as we age,
And the wisdom of a five-year-old
can match the wisest sage
And so, we search our childhood
for laughter laid away
Hoping to recapture
a little innocence for a day.

But the child’s speech and clothing
no longer fit the man
And so, the time must come one day
to leave the box of sand
And stand in the doorway
of dreams we have known
And choose which dreams are hollow,
which dreams will bring us home;
And choose which dreams to follow
on the road that leads us home.