Lullaby

The photographs start with the last day I visited Nathaniel at his grandmother Julia's house in March of this year. I do think he knew something was amiss by the sadness in his eyes. At first when I arrived he wanted to get into the car with me and leave. The entire time it was most difficult to contain my emotions. Toward evening, staying as long as I could, he fell asleep in my arms. I gently laid him down on a pallet in the living room and slipped out of his life. Julia said that later when he woke, he went throughout the yard and trailer calling for and looking for his Pappa. That further broke my heart. The photographs then move to the first time in March of 2011 that my father saw Nathaniel at the VA in Lake City where soon there after, he passed away. It then moves to the death of Melanie's sister Melissa in December of 2012 and holding a sleeping Nathaniel in my arms.  It then moves on into dreams, of a fading memory of a Pappa, ghost-like upon the trail, of meme Clara reading to him under the all present Jesus calling painting, of his rocking horse  that mysteriously would neigh in the night and then concluding with Nathaniel looking up as he so often did. We were always looking up, seeking the moon, the stars, the clouds, the rainbows as I pointed things out to him from a little infant, cradled in the nook of my arm.
Not a day passes that I do not look up and pray for our reunion, to ring my fathers old bell announcing the joy to all that a son and a grandson have returned home, to a Pappa's arms.