Photograph

prompt: photographs

Peals of laugh echo through the house for several minutes. I quietly pull groceries out of the brown paper bags and put them away in the cupboards . My little girl's sing song voice carries through to the kitchen.

"Grandpa, why don't you have any pictures in your house?"

The silence drags on for several moments growing heavy.

Finally a voice as thin and papery as his skin fills the room.

"Well lady-bug, pictures are to help you remember people and places but sometimes it's easier for Paw-paw to forget."

I watch them silently from the doorway.

She looks inquisitively up at him, her brown mop of hair falling into her eyes, which she brushes away impatiently. Her brow furrows in confusion. The question lingers in her eyes, but after a moment she reaches her tiny hand up to cup his cheek gently and then she hops down off his lap to play with her toys on the floor.

Anger and sorrow well up inside me and a hot tear burns  it's way down my cheek when he looks up.

"Lady bug, why don't you go play out back for bit." he says gently.

She happily obliges, skipping down the hall to the back door, humming softly to herself.

Without saying anything else, he points at his black, worn, leather Bible sitting on the coffee table.
With a huff I walked over, and hand it to him.

From within it's pages he pulls a faded black and white photograph.
It had been taken from the back seat of a cab.  The taxi driver is a young man wearing a crisp white shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows.  His arm is thrown casually over the seat back, smiling shyly at the camera.

My father fingers a well worn corner but doesn't speak for a long time. Impatient and confused I make an attempt at speech but only something akin to a squeak comes out. I dare not try again or the floodgate of tears I am struggling to hold back will burst open.

Finally, he clears his throat, never taking his eyes off the photograph.

"This is the only photo left. I burned the rest."

At this, my tears come unbidden and uncontrollable.

"Your mother took this photo of me on the day we first met. She was my last fare before I went off shift that day," his eyes grow distant as he remembers.  "She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen and I just couldn't stop looking at her in the rearview mirror. A pretty photographer who hopped into my cab and turned my world upside down."

My tears fast become sobs.  I have never heard my father talk about the day he met my mother.

"You think that I'm cruel for not calling you right away when she died, or for throwing away all of her things, and for burning all the photographs." his voice catches in his throat.

" But you don't understand. To have them around...I ...I couldn't function. Sometimes I would stop to look at her picture and I would lose an hour, or a day or a week. I'd get lost in my grief, lost in remembering. I would sit in the bedroom with the faintest smell of her perfume on a scarf she'd worn and I'd be completely undone."  His eyes sharpen and focus on me. " So I got rid of all of it, except for this."
He pauses to take a wheezy breath.
" I came from an era where love was strong and real. You took time to court and woo a lady and it could take years. But for us, it happened on this day. I was crazy for your mother right from the first time I laid eyes on her. I knew right then -that day- that if she'd have me, I'd marry her.  "

He touches the photograph again. "This is the closest I can come to remembering."