SATURDAY ESSAY

is on no memorial other than his gravestone.

There are no pictures of him, because to a family in poverty, a camera and film were out of the question, and there would have been nothing to smile for in a snapshot anyway. The box of tools is all that’s left, an odd and poignant reminder of a life that in the instant he was riddled with bullets became unbearably hard.

Thousands of other families will have their own mementoes that speak to them as personally as my grandfather’s few poor belongings do to me. Maybe medals, maybe letters, maybe a photograph in uniform, each precious beyond monetary worth and freighted with emotional significance, to be passed down the generations along with the story it tells.