Day 8 – A Photo That Makes Me Sad

This old photograph makes me sad.

You're probably wondering how on earth a photo of such a sweet little girl could make anyone sad. It saddens me for a multitude of reasons. I had never seen this picture until just after my grandpa died. It was in one of my grandma's albums on a page with other photographs printed on postcards from the mid-1930s. It reminds me of grandpa dying and of how hard Alzheimer's had grandma in it's grips. She couldn't tell me who the little girl was.

So, it is a sad picture because I do not know who this pretty little girl is and everyone who could tell me who she is (that I know of) is already dead. She is on my mental bucket list...I want to identify her somehow before I die, too.

I know who she isn't. She isn't my grandma, because in the mid-1930s, my grandma was a young adult in her early 20s. It isn't my mama because my mama wasn't born until the mid-1940s. It isn't her sisters, either, because they were also born in the 1940s.

As sad as it makes me to look at it, it is one of my most favorite pictures, and it gives me a purpose, finding out who she is and how she is connected to me.