me and Grace at her bridal shower, April 10, 2004

I was doing a massive digital photo review last nite, and for the first time, opened the CD case that contained a CD-Rom of Grace’s photos. Upon Grace’s passing last October, her uncle had collected photos from all stages of her life and put together a memorial book for her. I’d also loaned my entire photo album collections from high school to her uncle for this purpose. The rough photos and completed pages, along with other miscellaneous things related to Grace (poems, etc) were in the CD-Rom.

I thought I’d dealt with Grace’s passing fairly stoically, but I could never bring myself to view the CD-Rom. I’d always attributed it to laziness. However, with someone very supportive “with” me via IM, I popped the CD in… and cried my eyes out. One of the most significant things to me was the digital image of the back of a photo Grace had given me (which I’d forgotten about), on which she’d written:

The funny thing is now, 12 years later, I still change my outgoing message regularly, altho now it’s a cell phone instead of an answering machine (currently it says “Hi, I’m out hunting buffalo. Leave a message!”) And she advised me about men unworthy of me all the way thru to the last time I saw her alive.

It was a good cathartic release, and I was given great support and comfort as I shared Grace and Justin (her husband)’s story and some of their photos. Thanks, Kevin.