Lost Treasure

The video camera bag had sat undisturbed in the corner of our bedroom closet for longer than either of us could remember. The dust had collected in such a thick layer that it seemed to permanently discolor the top of the black canvas bag turning it into a dirty gray. The camera had once belonged to Marissa’s father who had passed away about eighteen months before Dave’s untimely death from substance abuse, and since that time the bag had been shuffled from room to room until it was pushed to the back of our closet. I had some vague notion that the camera no longer worked properly which was the primary reason it had lain untouched and unopened for so long.

But fate intervened tonight when Marissa decided to move the bag so she could clean and I decided it was time to remove it from our closet and dispose of it once and for all. Before doing so I opened it up to remove anything that might be useful, but instead of useful I found a treasure tucked under the worn and battered camera. There in the bottom of the bag lay a video cassette that said “Dave, Lawrence Central High School Baseball.”

I picked it up gently, almost gingerly at first; afraid it might disintegrate at the touch of my fingers. I turned it slowly in my hand knowing I was holding a gift from the past. I called for Marissa to join me; put the cassette into the player and suddenly we were transported back in time. There was David standing at the plate in a game from some six years ago at a ball park we’d long forgotten, swinging his bat to loosen up as only he could, tapping the corners of home plate for luck like he always did and settling into his “perfect” stance to await the pitchers next fast ball. Marissa and I watched transfixed as one “at bat” blended into another until after twenty minutes or so he disappeared from our view as the screen turned to black and white snow.

Shortly after Dave died we gathered our family movies together and had them all transferred to DVD to protect and preserve them. We had been exhaustive in our search and Marissa had spent hour upon hour watching them and putting them in chronological order. Something I was incapable of at the time and still would not be able to do today. And so it was particularly powerful for us to discover a memory we had missed, a treasure in time that had been lost for a while…

and for just a little while we saw our son again for the first time in many years doing the thing that he loved and the two of us loving him the way we did and still do without pain; only joy.