Memories

The People We Love Most
by Shelby Lewis Jones

Some people touch our lives and become a part of us forever.
Even when they are no longer with us, we still think of them as being close.
We feel their warmth, and remember special things they said and did, and times we shared.

Ten years ago today my DH died. He was 60 years old and had been in excellent health until six months before he died from pancreatic cancer. He was cremated and his ashes scattered. He did not want to be buried in a place but to be part of the earth. We used a quotation by Louis Pasteur at his memorial funeral. It said, The more I study nature, the more I am amazed at the Creator. DH ask that when we remembered him, we go into nature wherever we were. Today I did.

I also looked through pictures. There are very few pictures of him as a child but here is one. I don't know how old he was but his siblings always told that his mother wouldn't let anyone cut his curly hair and everyone thought he was a girl. When he was about five years old, his older brothers cut his hair.

After he died, we made a book of pictures representing times during his life. Today I looked at it again. There are pages with his siblings, with me and when he was hunting and fishing. I think ecologist and naturalist are good words to describe him. He also loved and really enjoyed his grandchildren. The page I'm posting is from this book. It is pictures of him with his grandchildren when they were small. There were four grandchildren when he died and now he has two more. Two of them have graduated from collage and one is a sophomore in college. The little one just turned 11 years old.

I put the bottom picture at the end of the book we made. We were walking on a path at a local park. I let DH get ahead of me and snapped it. I think today he's still walking, just ahead of me.