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From where I was sitting, I couldn’t see exactly what he had, but I recognized the item. It looked like a photo.
Craig turned the picture toward his wife, whose face lit up. “Oh, this is perfect. Yes, Indy, you take this with you.”
I reached for the photo when Craig held it out to me and said, “I know you probably have pictures of the two of you together on your phone and this is rather old-fashioned, but I thought you might like to have this.”
What I saw in the photo made my heart start pounding in my chest. There was nothing sensational about the picture beyond it being one of Griffin. It was a close-up shot of him sitting on the beach, the bare skin on his chest tanned, and his arms resting on top of his bent knees. He was smiling brilliantly at the camera.
Craig had been wrong.
I didn’t like that he was giving me the photo.Likecouldn’t even come close to describing how I felt about it.
“I love this,” I rasped. “Thank you so much.”
“You’re welcome, sweetheart. It was from a trip Lori and I took out to Hawaii last year to visit our son. We went out to watch him compete, and this picture was taken two days after he won that surfing comp.”
Though I knew it hadn’t been his intention to upset me, the truth was that seeing the photo of Griffin made me feel so many different emotions.
Knowing he looked this happy after having won a competition made me feel happy and sad all at the same time. Because I was obviously thrilled to learn he’d won, but I was upset that I didn’t know him then, so I could have witnessed it.
If the picture had been taken last year, the likelihood was that while Griffin was experiencing another high in his life, mine was falling apart. That didn’t necessarily upset me, because I never wanted him to know that feeling—like his world was falling apart. But I couldn’t say it didn’t just hit me a little hard to see just how different the places we’d been in our lives were.
Looking at the photo of Griffin, I mostly just felt an overwhelming sense of longing and misery.
God, I missed him so much.
Every day without him felt like such a struggle. And while I did things to keep myself as busy as I could, so the time would pass a little quicker, it was impossible to completely escape from the feeling of sorrow.
Griffin was constantly on my mind. He was always in my thoughts.
We were only four weeks into a nearly eighteen-week stretch of time without each other. There was still so much time left until I’d be making that trip out to visit him in Hawaii.
I didn’t exactly know how I was going to last until then, but I hoped having this picture would make it a little bit easier to cope. And if nothing else, I could always come back to visit with his parents to feel a little closer to him until the time came when I could see him in person.
That’s when an idea popped into my head. “Do you have photos from Griffin’s career?”
“We have tons of them. Would you like to see them?”
I nodded. “The next time I come for a visit, I’d love to see all that you have.”
“You let us know when that is, and I’ll be certain to pull everything out,” Craig assured me.
“That would be wonderful. Thank you.”
“Anything at all, Indy.”
Following a round of goodbyes, I took the carrot cake Lori wrapped up for me and the photo Craig had given to me, and I left.
And after running a few errands while I was down in town, I made my way back to the resort. But I didn’t do any of that without wishing I’d find Griffin waiting there for me when I returned.
* * *
Griffin
“You alright, dude?”
“Yeah, you just don’t seem yourself.”
I set my surfboard down and lowered myself onto the sand.
