Kate changed her profile picture on Facebook to one Rachel took of the two of them. They were both scrunched down trying to get in the frame at the height of a three-year-old. They are clearly laughing and happy.
What struck me about the photo is what I don't see when I look in the mirror; what I don't see looking across the supper table at my parents; what I don't see in the faces of Kate, Jim's in-laws, and the others who took his death so hard. In the photo of Jim and Kate, there's a sparkle in their eyes. You can see it in the other photos from when Jim was still with us. Now...there's no sparkle, that pure joy is missing from our eyes.
We've all got our new normal. But it's a new normal without Jim and it sucks. We live, we laugh, and we go on - one day at a time, but the sparkle, the light that was Jim, went out. It went out in all of us, and no matter how hard we try, it isn't something we can relight. Our photos now have the eyes of our new normal - sadder and without the light was Jim.
