Mary Elaine Hyman

This picture means the world to me. It was taken when I was five years old on one of millions of visits my family took to my uncle's house in Virginia. The man embracing my younger brother and me is my dad's dad, "Papa"as we knew him. I've never met a better man than my grandfather, and when he passed a few years ago, it seemed as if the cancer he had been fighting spread to my entire family. The emotional toll that year took seemed infinite. The house in the background of this picture was sold in the wake, and I haven't been to Charlottesville, Virginia ever since. I loved my grandfather very much, and his endless stories live on in the tales that my grandma still tells, and I try never to miss an opportunity to listen. I see so much of my grandpa in my own father, and I have recieved the insurmountable compliment that he can be seen in me too. I will always look up to the hero in this picture, and his advice rings in my head all the time. This is one of the few photographs I still have of my Papa and I at this house, and it will always remind me of some of the most carefree parts of my life.