"Dedicated here to the unfinished work"

Yesterday, BH wanted my help with a video project, so we watched old footage he'd stored on one of his video cameras. In one video, his then-perhaps-five-year-old son reads a book out loud, staring occasionally into the camera lens to deliver key lines with grave and dramatic emphasis. In another, BH's then-maybe-three-year-old daughter props a storybook open on the piano and studiously turns the pages as she presses the piano keys, as if the book contains musical notes for her to play. In a third video, BH wears a crumpled aluminum-foil mask and delivers an incomprehensible alienesque monologue ala Renetto on YouTube.

In a fourth video, BH moves jerkily into the frame from offcamera, settles himself, and recites The Gettsyburg Address. His words are slurred, labored, raspy. At one point he is interrupted by his wife's voice as she enters the room to fetch something; when she has left (without, it seems, knowing that she was recorded), he repositions himself, nods, laughs nervously, and gives the camera a goofy grin that seems to say "wow, uh, yep." Then he struggles his way through to the end of the Address.

But it's not the struggle I focused on when I watched that video. I saw BH moving his body by himself. I heard him speaking. I saw life sparkling in his eyes. In the video, he is engaged and engaging.

The contrast with today is sharp, extreme. As the video played yesterday on BH's computer, his now-nearing-five-year-old daughter stood by the side of his wheelchair, looking from the screen to her dad, her dad to the screen.

Later that day, watering the plants in my garden, I cried.