#61

She had not been able to write in her journal since it happened. Perhaps it made things to permanent to put in ink. But a friend made her try, finally, knowing it would help even if it hurt. So, pulling out her familiar fine point pen and opening the battered gray cover, she found the next blank space and wrote the date using numerals separated by dots. She stared at the numbers. They seemed familiar, especially through her exhausted weepy eyes.

With a courage she did not think she had, she opened the photos on her phone and scrolled past many painful images of the person she loved who was still alive but not around, wiping through years until she found the photo she had taken one morning of her grandmother combing her hair at dawn, as her grandmother did everyday.

The date on the photo was exactly three years prior. A date that would always resonate. She had taken the photo while lying in the bed where her grandfather slept each night until very recently. She had wanted to sleep there, in clean sheets, to make sure her grandmother did not have to look at the empty bed where her husband should have been.

He had passed away the night before, and she laid in his bed amazed at the woman in the mirror who woke up on August 15th and every day after that, combing her hair, preparing for a new day.