In this picture, Matthew has Dad's expression when he is listening.
When LD, known at my home as Papa Lawrence by the grandchildren, visited, everyone had a grand time. He brought books and photographs, and told stories of his adventures, and they asked questions and told him of their own adventures and things they had done and would like to do. In retrospect, we had no way of knowing that Dad would depart in 2008, and that grandson Daniel, 12, would die thirty days later, the presumed result of a sudden arrhythmic death syndrome. Fifteen years later, the loss of grandson Matthew at 32, following an influenza vaccine is equally shocking.
I never thought that any of my children (the five) looked like my Dad. Our children don't come from us, but through us, and they are likely to have characteristics of grandparents, great grands, aunts, uncles, as well as having talents and physical looks that might just be uniquely themselves.
In the process of making online memorials for both the boys I have had to look through a great many pictures. I don't know why I didn't notice it before, but in some pictures Matthew looks very much like my father. I would imagine that Daniel might have had similarities too. I suppose this comes from the fact that I knew my father as an adult and then as an older man. Since I never saw him as a child or teen, I just might not have noticed the similarities.
The above is a picture of Matthew at 32. I look at it and I see so much of my father LD.
I am consoled only by the fact that Dad, Daniel and Matthew are together now, likely laughing, sharing stories, and possibly laughing about some of the things that I and other family members did.
