Photograph

This afternoon when I came home from work, I found an envelope from my mother in the mail. I opened it anticipating anything but what I found inside:

I gasped at her stunning beauty! It was a picture of my mother at 31 holding my little brother who had just turned one. She was flawless! My older daughter said, "You look just like her, Mom!" I responded, "Thank you sweetheart. That is such a compliment, as my mother is very beautiful." She exclaimed, "No, look! you really do look just like her!", while she held the picture next to my face as if to prove her point. Kids have a way of knowing exactly when your heart needs lifting.

The next picture took my breath away in a different manner. It was of my grandmother and my little brother taken just a month before my stepfather murdered her. She was seventy and full of life and joy. This may well have been the last picture my mother took of her. I was not prepared to see this photograph, and I was shocked at how quickly my tears flowed upon looking at it.

I cannot describe her smile, or what it meant to me, nor her joyful demeanor and the peace she carried with it. I just want to jump into the picture and be in her world again. I want to spend Spring Break at her home (just about twenty minutes from our own), under her protection where he would not come for me.

My mother sent these pictures, because she wanted her grandchildren to see who she was before the wheelchair. She wanted them to know that there was a time when she walked just like everyone else, and she wanted them to see the love in the smile and the eyes of their great-grandmother.

He took so much from us...even from my children.