Thankful Thursdays

Once upon a time this blog routinely featured Love Thursday, but somewhere along the way I stopped doing them.  Lately, I've been thinking about how quickly I let my days fall into frustration or unhappiness over little things and how long it takes me to pull it.  It bothers me. I used to be better at letting the little things slide by.  Granted, I am in a much more emotional place right now, but want to find my way back to a focus on happiness and gratitude.  Today, I read my mom and sister's blog posts as they pondered a month without my living in our midst (I have to believe he is "with" us so I choose my words carefully).  There are so many regrets I have, many of which Audra mentioned.  However, I want to move away from regrets and on to gratitude, if I can (tears, so many tears).  Coincidentally, Elle's Studio's Blog is hosting "Thankful Thursdays" every Thursday in October and November.  That seems a manageable length of time to me and better than just one week a year but not as daunting as every week. I'm going to keep it simple and focus on little thing and invite you to join me in thankfulness if you like.

I am thankful for: Photographs

I am working on collecting photos for the "Me: The Abridged Version" and am frequently drawn off to other cool images in my collection.  I had a heart stopping moment where I thought I only had 32 pictures of my Dad from the last three years, but luckily it was a search error.  I really have close to 1000 tagged in my collection which is sort of comforting and I know my siblings probably have hundreds more.  I don't always think of him as the most cheerful man as he was often so stressed or sleepy or worried, but in my photographs he so often is.  As I flipped through I came upon picture after picture of smiles and hugs.  There is an amazing picture of him standing by my house helping build our garden and so many other smiling faces looking back at me in this trove of treasures.  I am thankful for digital cameras and the luxury to be able to instantly pull every picture he is tagged in if I want to and have a 800 smiles.  I am so thankful for what I have, what we had, and that there are tangible images and not just my sometimes cloudy memory.  I'm not yet ready to scrapbook these things, really, almost too much pressure, but I am starting to be ready to look and maybe smile back now and then.   For now, I am thankful.

Crying.... still.