My mother gave my little boy a broken necklace to have as his own. It was half a heart locket with my mother's picture in it when she was about 2o. The photo is scratched and faded. My heart wrenched when I saw it and that she had given it to Jacob to play with.
I stole it from him.
In grief, I wondered where the other half was. I knew my father's photo had to be in it.
This is Dad, about the time of the locket photo. If you look very carefully over his head, you can see my ill-tempered grandfather, William Brantley.
Why hadn't she given it to me? I would have handled it gently, reverently, rather than playing with it, swinging it around and around, heedless of the treasure that it is to me.
This is probably my favorite photo of my parents, from November 2003. We took them to Savannah, Georgia for Thanksgiving that year. They lived there when I was very small. We visited Civil War sites that they remembered, and we ate dinner on a River Boat Cruise. This photo is from the woods at the trailer park that they had lived in. The clothesline my Dad had strung for Mom was still there and the tree had grown around it, making it a part of the place.
Dad died 5 months later. I am forever grateful that we had the means to take them on this last trip together, to revisit a place and time that had been important to them.
I guess that is why the locket is important to me. I found this photo online and wished that I had the other half to make a memory necklace to keep both my parents with me.
And now I can. Mom gave Jacob the other half of the necklace. Dad is so faded, you can barely see him. But I know he's there, just like he is in my heart. Always.
So I stole it, too.
