My great-uncle Mario was a technophile until the day he died,
and he did die somewhat young — somewhat tragic how men become
only names to ignorant children, resurrected by seance of family and photograph
on Christian holidays, when such miracles are commonplace.

I have no memory of meeting him, though we did meet, and I’m sure
he doted and delighted in the precociousness of his young great-nephew.

I have vivid memories, thereafter, of visiting my great-aunt Frances
in their cramped, second-story apartment, narrow stairs leading
into a cluttered — though not untidy — living room, a homely hoard
resplendent with the humble treasures that a life of living affords.

My parents and Frances would reminisce in the kitchen
while us layabout children watched old comedies on video cassette.
Forgive us — it is difficult to reminisce at 6 or 8 or even 10,
before we can properly shoulder and stoop beneath the burden of absence.

Video cassette!
It must have been cutting-edge the day Mario lugged the VHS player
up the narrow stairs. He likely kissed his wife in celebration, and toasted
to the many years that remained to them together on this planet.

I don’t know why I feel the need to employ ham-fisted tragic irony.
You need no reminder we all die. Some wives are left draped in magnetic tape
when their husbands pass; some husbands are left with the paintings
that drew Frances’s grieving great-nephew’s eye.

It depicts a woman playing a small, stringed instrument — perhaps a lute.
My mother objected to inheriting the large and likely tacky portrait,
but to me it felt appropriate. In lieu of Mario, it was the musician waiting
over Fran’s shoulder, greeting my family from atop the narrow stairs.

Months ago, I was visiting my father in my childhood home, in the basement
retrieving laundry, when I saw the woman with her lute leant against a concrete wall,
her face downcast and doubly shrouded in brushed and subterranean shadow.

“Hmm,” I observed, and climbed the cluttered, basement stairs.