I brought my father’s picture with me so I’d recognize him. Sure, it was worn and faded, and, sure, it depicted an already aging man at twenty-four with a push-broom mustache in ’77, standing like Jesus, thrilled to be on the cross, in front of his copper red Pontiac Firebird. It was the only picture in the vast shoeboxes in my mother’s closet where there was any hint of a smile on his face. The ol’ Clincher my mom always wielded during holidays and get togethers of every sort captured many moments of my father, and, yet, he never smiled in any of those polaroids. The one of him holding me the day I was born captured an impassive haze on his lips and eyes. His face was so sullen in the family portrait my mom begged my grandfather to take on my fifth Christmas; it’s a little blurry, but his face completely lacked emotion. But this picture—he so loved that car, I reckon. Polaroids never did a good job of capturing shadows, but even beneath the darkness I could see life in his eyes. It was the only picture out of hundreds that I sifted through in which there was any emotion in his face. I suppose another picture would have been more fitting, then, as I stood inside an assisted living facility staring at an old picture of my father, hoping it would help me recognize the man lying in a bed before me, emotionless.
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