Joe and Mickie

It always seems to me that coming into the New Year somehow brings along a few tattered bits of things I should've finished with in the Old Year.   Sometimes it's something I wish I'd said to someone.  For example, I wish maybe I'd broken my mother's ten year silence between us before she died last July.   Or maybe it's something I could've forgiven myself for, or someone else for.   Sometimes a tattered little bit of unfinished business can haunt me through decades of New Years.  One in particular I've managed to ignore for 35 years.

 I was digging through a box of old photographs a couple days ago, and found a small, faded picture of my father at 53, holding my baby daughter on his tummy.   It was the only time he had with her, ever, and the look of bliss on his face at the time the shot was taken was totally missed by me until I found that photo again this week.   He died three years later of a brain tumor.  

I took out my Inktense pencils and sketched that moment in time before the photo degrades any further.   That tattered bit of thing that I didn't know I was dragging with me through those decades was to acknowledge and honor the loving imprint that dear man had left on the lives of my family.... even those who can't remember him.  The sketch was that acknowledgement for me.