The back of the picture says:
    June 1980
    Jack Sr.
    Jack Jr.
    Jack III
    Amanda.
    4 generations.

    My great-grandmother is there too,
    but her name has not been written down.
    I do not know her name.
    She was not born a member of our family;
    I have this status which she does not.
    My name seems out of place.
    I might have been called Jackie.
    My mother put her foot down.

    My great-grandfather is smiling.
    Great-grandmother is not, but not frowning, either.
    She is not looking directly at the camera,
    instead focusing off in the distance somewhere.

    My grandfather seems solemn.
    He is in the middle, between his parents.
    He also looks to the side,
    perhaps searching for what his mother sees.

    My father holds me,
    in a way that makes it clear
    he's not been schooled in how to hold a baby.
    He grins into the lens.
    I sit there in his arms.
    I am six months old.

    I am the first grandchild.
    They knew that, then.
    They did not know that there would be no sons.
    They did not know that this would be the last picture
    of four generations of our line.

    I am the end of the road,
    the last person in our family
    who will die with our name.
    I'm not sure what I think about that.
    They did not know it, then.