> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.merionwest.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# A Photograph of Fading Memories
- URL: https://www.merionwest.com/a-photograph-of-fading-memories/
- Published: 2026-08-25T20:55:14.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-26T17:20:52.000Z
- Description: W. D. Ehrhart
- Author: MW Editors
- Tags: Poetry, Arts

![Black-and-white 1938 family photograph of six siblings posed in two rows](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2c/bf/2cbf55d5-edac-4019-bf5c-bf6b4bf7d745/content/images/2026/08/Unknown.jpg)

This photo is my mother’s siblings,  
all but Uncle Eddie, who died when he  
was one month old, a “blue baby,” bad heart.  
All the others now dead, too, of course,  
the photo taken nineteen-thirty-eight.

Uncle Tom was first to go, the uncle  
I didn’t really know at all, never even met  
his first wife or their four kids, though I knew  
his second wife and their two boys, but only  
after he was dead. Slipped into a coma  
having a pacemaker replaced. Never  
regained consciousness. My only memory  
of him sleeping on the eyelash of death,  
my mother talking to her older brother  
as if he could hear. Maybe he could.

Evelyn, my mother, was the next to go.  
A difficult marriage; four kids, all boys;  
she finally found fulfillment as a teacher,  
special ed, trainable retarded was the term  
back then; not allowed to use that term  
today, but she used it, and she loved them.  
Cancer killed her. A kind of cancer  
only smokers and drinkers ever get,  
though she herself had never smoked  
or had one drop of liquor. Go figure.

The others made it to the 21st century,  
though Uncle Vince just barely got there.  
Worked for Joe the Motorist’s Friend  
only to get cheated of his pension  
when the company went bust.  
I never heard him whine about it;  
just went out and got another job,  
and worked until his heart gave out  
driving on an interstate highway,  
my cousin Kathy saving her own life  
and her mother’s, grabbing the wheel,  
managing to get the car off the road  
without colliding with a tractor-trailer.

Florence went next. Another bad heart,  
perhaps. During the 2nd World War,  
she’d met and married an army air corps  
pilot who stayed in for thirty years,  
then had a new career with Merrill Lynch.  
I stayed with them in Birmingham  
on my way from New Orleans to Farmingdale  
to do a poetry reading for 50 bucks.  
And one more time in Alpharetta  
years later, doing interviews and research  
for a book called *Ordinary Lives*.

I’m not sure what killed Alvera. Maybe  
a failing heart, clearly a family defect,  
killed her, too. She lived in Dundalk,  
a modest rowhouse, husband worked  
for Social Security, I think. Grandma Conti  
lived with them when I was in the Corps.  
I went to visit once, but Vera kept  
her distance from her siblings, didn’t come  
to Thanksgiving family gatherings,  
some sort of tension that I never understood,  
and no one ever talked about.

Something, perhaps, to do with Aunt Alberta,  
who married a man who became a career  
army chaplain, and they traveled the world.  
Bert’s house had souvenirs and knick-knacks  
from Germany, Korea, and everywhere  
Vera had never gone and never would.  
I tried to give Aunt Bert a copy of my  
first book of poems: *A Generation of Peace*,  
but she told me she didn’t need to read  
about war, she knew about war,  
her husband had been in two of them.  
But as she aged, she mellowed, becoming  
more attentive, more receptive.  
By the time she died at ninety-eight,  
I’d gotten very fond of her.

So there they are: my mother and her  
siblings. All of them now dead and buried,  
Together, they had twenty children,  
some I know, some I haven’t seen  
in decades, some I’ve never even met.  
And so the generations go, one upon  
the next, and one day no one living  
will know a thing about the people   
in this photo. Not even their names.

### W. D. Ehrhart's most recent books are a 2025 collection of poems, [*Smart Fish Don't Bite*](https://moonstone-arts-center.square.site/product/ehrhart-w-d-smart-fish-don-t-bite/YD2QGAXXBUFHBNEM4K6HS6AF?cs=true&cst=custom&utm%5Fmedium=email&%5Fhsenc=p2ANqtz-%5FW-lL6cwwW8bsQANmJwm3MsSw-S42Z2xGh0k2oeotYQjMZaBNz9DqAOukdKP95CuNaM19QsZuXdCh2rJglFzD6U6sG4g&%5Fhsmi=380810861&utm%5Fcontent=380810861&utm%5Fsource=hs%5Femail) from Moonstone Arts, and [*Getting Shot At: Essays on War, Conflict & Culture Clash*](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1476658625?lv=shuf&channelId=500&plpRedirect=mhFallback&ref=merionwest.com)*,* which was released this year with McFarland & Company, Inc. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Wales at Swansea and taught English and history at The Haverford School from 2001 to 2019.