making sense

Seeing pictures you never saw, after someone has gone, is disarming. And heartwarming.

I found this picture on my daughter’s bulletin board this week.

She told me she chose it because she could hear him laugh.

I remember this laugh.

I have studied this picture that I had forgotten about. I see the stack of children’s books on his lap. He agreed to read one and she brought 5. He read it pretending the pages were stuck together so he could get through it quickly. She caught him. He made funny voices for all the characters. He probably told her it was a ridiculous book that made no sense. She told him it was a good book.

This laugh, this tease, this version of him are from so long ago. I look at her size and think about how she is the oldest grandchild and got the most time with his well and real self. And yet she is too little to remember the best of him.

I wonder if there is a day you wake up and somehow it makes sense.

 

 

6 thoughts on “making sense

  1. I don’t think it will ever make sense Nanc. But god the memories this one picture can stir is amazing no? I never met him and just from this picture I have a sense of him. That’s what we have to hold on to. x

    • It is the best picture, isn’t it? It is too easy to forget all someone was. xox

  2. I recently found some tapes of my daughters when they were little and had them transferred to CDs so we could watch them. What I did not remember till I watched them, was how much of my late husband was on them. Seeing him was bittersweet. It is difficult to see someone we have lost being so alive and happy but how grateful I am and I know you are as well Nancy to have had such a wonderful man in your life and your children’s lives.

  3. Love how a little photo evokes big emotion. Love that Charlotte has that one to stare upon, to remember the big laugh. She’s carried it forward.

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