Finding Photos

There are still surprises, still people from Leif's past who look for him online and find the blog or his Facebook page, memories others have I've never known, photos of him someone took I've never seen.

Last week I got out a couple of cell phones that Leif had in his apartment to see whether they worked and whether there were any photos or videos on them. When we found them, all I did at the time was put whatever accessories and manuals I found together in the appropriate box and put them in a bigger box to deal with later. I knew that a couple of them were phones we could use if we wanted to and just sort of kept them as backups. Then I thought i'd offer one to my granddaughter, who was going to get her own phone line, and figured I'd better put them back into the out-of-the-box settings. So, I took a look, not just at the memory in the phones but at some mini and micro SD cards that were used with them. And found photos of Leif I'd never seen before.

Some were painful to see, photos that Donna took of him in the ER after his motorcycle accident. Others made me wonder where they were taken, though I could see when by the filename the cell phone had given them. Long ago on this blog I wrote about wondering how many photos of Leif are "out there" somewhere, photos I'll never know exist and will never see, so it seems a bit ironic that i'd find some of them on two phones in my own closet.

This one is of Leif in his cycle jacket and cap, taken March 5, 2006, just a couple of weeks after he moved out of our house and into an apartment in Tampa. I remember that at that time, he had hope, was looking forward to being in the city, glad to have found a companion. In this photo he still has that speculative, sardonic little smile, that piercing gaze. I'd expect him to come out with some witty remark about now. I wish he were here and he could.