Family Album

There are people I've never seen
There are places I've never been
And they all seem to live in my family album
People I should know
Who lived so long ago
On a pleasant street that calls out to be known
But now they're gone

There are photographs that seem
To have been taken in a dream
And pasted up inside my family album
Time is standing still
For someone on a hill
Holding a baby and squinting up at the sun
But now they're gone

And I see myself as my parents did
When I was just a skinny kid
And they were oh-so-proud of their growing son
But now they're gone

Though no one can withstand the ages
My family lives on in these pages
Leaving me their past to dwell upon
Captured in their youth and glory
I watch their pictures tell the stories
I never saw while life was going on
And now they're gone

Will I tell my kids, "I knew you when"
Will memories take them back again
Will my kids have an album of their own
And one day say, "Now they're gone
Now they're gone"