The Cape Cod video was cued up when I walked in to Anne and Willie’s house last weekend. We have watched it so many times over the past 14 years that I can narrate the course of events without seeing it on screen. I am the one behind the camera, so the entire thing is shot from the perspective of a short eighth-grader who doesn’t have a steady camcorder hand. My best friend Tegan and my cousin Jordan are in the water, which is roughly the same shade as the slate sky. That day was one of only a couple in our whole vacation when it didn’t rain, so we piled into the cars and drove up to Nauset Beach, where we knew the waves were big.

In the video my cousin Ben is still small, only just 12, and shorter than Tegan. His voice hasn’t changed yet, his hair is a poofy Afro and his face round and chubby-cheeked as he wades out into the surf, where his brother Jordan splashed water toward him. Jordan is tall and fit, coming off a senior year of wrestling. There is a huge wave building, and it’s a little too much for Ben, so he turns to run back toward shore. He trips and starts to get up again when the wave whooshes in and swooshes him away down the beach through the throngs of people. He stands up, sways to catch his footing, wobbling and pointing at the camcorder. We are all laughing, and my aunt is clapping her hands in delight that this moment has been captured forever. Ben comes running up to the camera. He has lost his aqua sock in the wave takedown. “My aqua sock!” he shouts, pronouncing aqua like Ohk-kwa, with a rounded Massachusetts O.

In Anne and Willie’s living room we laughed again and we marveled at the youngness of us all — Tegan and I were just starting high school then, and Jordan about to begin college. One day that summer Papa gathered us three in the living room of the Chatham house, the same one where we later played charades with Ben (that of course is all on video, too) and he talked to us about the next steps of our lives, and how big things were happening now. We all remember this talk. We remember all of the Life Talks from Papa.

Some time after Papa died we sat in Anne and Willie’s living room and watched this same video. In another scene there is a barbecue dinner. My cousin Seneca, then eight, has the camcorder this time, and so the point-of-view is even lower than when it’s me filming.

These hot dogs and burgers, Papa says to someone off screen, any restaurant would be proud of their presentation. His hair is white and his eyes are the bluest blue, and he is wearing a T-shirt with a pocket on the chest. I watched this scene from years before and nearly cried in the living room, both because I was sad and also because I felt overwhelmed by this gift. We are so lucky to always be able to hear his voice.

It is this same feeling I had last weekend as we watched the aqua sock chaos and later switched to the 2005 Cape video (now on DVD instead of chunky VHS tapes). This time Ben is only there on the screen. He died two years ago in April. We don’t know how. He was still in the throes of depression, and far too young. It still seems like he will walk into the living room at any moment. I have to remind myself often that this is not the case.

We danced a lot in 2005. Here are the little cousins trying to Irish dance to the Boston Pops. Here is Lucy — who now has a son of her own — shouting about leprechauns. Here we all are, the older kids jamming out while trying to be quiet and not wake everyone else. Ben dancing the shopping cart move, Ben and Jordan play-shoving each other as brothers do, Jordan and me and Tegan bouncing around. We shake the floor, a tile slips off a shelf and breaks. It is all here, in these videos. We can remind ourselves.

“I wish it were summer,” I said.

“I wish we could all be together,” Tegan said, which in retrospect is what we all meant to say, too.