Photographs by Numbers

7 - is the number of shopping days until Christmas

2 - is the number of parcels that arrived at my door on Thursday morning (before 11 - yippppeeee!)

0 - is the number of Christmas presents I have wrapped
5 - is the number of weeks since I last had a lie in with Andrew and we snuggled up close and I lay happy with my head on his chest.

Yesterday my sister-in-law emailed me some photos of Andrew and I together, of us holding hands and cuddling as we went for a family walk on the beach.  We are so together that even our footsteps are in time.

She had warned me in her email not to open them until I was ready, but honestly, when will that be?  I wanted to see them.  When I look at the photos of us so close it reminds me of his touch and I'm crying now as I type.  But I need to remember what it feels like because I don't want to forget.

When Andrew died I tried to find some item of clothing that had his smell on but it seemed to have disappeared.  Even the jumper I pulled out of the washing basket, that I now occasionally wear, had already lost his smell.

I don't want to lose the memory of his touch too.  It was too special to let go of.

-4 - is the lowest temperature I saw in my car yesterday

15 - is the number of people who added a message to my facebook page after I wrote "I don't know how I'll get through today"

1 - is the number of texts I received yesterday from eldest son.  He's in Spain on a tennis training camp.  He gave me some more numbers 10 - 5 the score of the match tie break he won and in return I must text him the football scores today!

My day of special photos continued when instead of going to bed when I should, I stayed at the computer and went through all our digital photos looking for the good ones of Andrew.  I found 15 and I've written down all their numbers....

Number 0426 is particularly good.  It's the last ever photo taken of the four of us.  

Last summer we each chose somewhere to go for a special day out - with Andrew working away we never really did proper family holidays.  He just wanted to stay at home.

Andrew's choice was a walk to a waterfall and on the way there were two large stone sheep which we sat on to have our photo taken.  There were another couple of tourists by the sheep on our return journey so we asked them to take a photo of the four of us.  Andrew and I sat on the front sheep in the race and the boys  followed behind.

We are all smiling and all happy, enjoying life! 

Maybe in some ways it was made more poignant because before we set off my dad had rung to say my uncle, who was also my Godfather, had died that morning.  Although our walk was planned we hadn't planned to go out that day, it just sort of happened as I wanted us to be together.

Life is so precious , memories are wonderful and photos just help us to remember....