Chapter 25 - Celine’s photograph changes
At nine, Elowen stopped putting Celine’s photograph at every table.
Not because Marcella won.
Because she no longer needed to.
One morning she moved the acrylic frame from her bedside table to a bookshelf.
I noticed.
Said nothing.
Two weeks later:
“Daddy?”
“Yeah?”
“Can Mommy’s picture stay in the living room?”
“Sure.”
“Not my room.”
“Okay.”
“Does that mean I’m forgetting?”
There.
Grief changes and children think change is betrayal.
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I don’t sleep with her scarf anymore.”
Elowen stared.
“You did?”
“For a while.”
“That’s weird.”
“Thank you.”
She smiled.
“Where is it?”
“Drawer.”
“Do you still love her?”
“Yes.”
“So I can move the picture.”
“Yes.”
We put Celine’s photograph on a living-room shelf among ordinary family pictures.
No spotlight.
No memorial table.
She joined birthdays, vacations, school photos, bad haircuts, pets.
Part of the family.
Not a shrine.
Marcella had spent years trying to erase a symbol.
May you like
Time did what force could not.
It let the symbol become memory naturally.
