Will McCollister

“Faye,” my Aunt Kathy called out to my mother as we sifted through the boxes of photos in my recently deceased grandmother’s spare bedroom. “Come look at this.” The faint smell of stale cinnamon candy that she kept on the dresser still lingered. My grandmother had died earlier that December, and now her daughters were culling through old photographs that no one else might ever see. My Aunt Kathy was cleaning out a separate room and said, “Faye, come look at this.” I can still remember walking into the room — I was 15 years old — and hearing my mother say, “I need this.”