Post your slice each school day between now and the start of Spring Break!
Glancing at the front and back covers quickly, and flipping through again, the book stopped on a photo of an open coffin: a silhouette on the left and stuffed toy looking out at the camera on the left.
The small circles and triangles of a Raggedy Ann doll peered straight at the camera. My eyes now focusing on the face visible in profile in the casket, I saw it was a child. The urgent thought, Kids only get in a coffin for one reason, surfaced and I started to turn the pages forwards and then backwards in the book to get any answers.
The ink pen handwriting told me this was Susan, and through the ten or twelve photos before Susan in the casket - her casket - there were photos of Susan smiling toothily holding up Raggedy Ann to the camera, and smiling coyly from around the dress-covered legs of a maternal figure. And just in those handfuls of photos, I was moved to tears thinking of the crumbled dreams and memories that the casket held.
Human connection and curiosity wanted to know what happened to the girl of no more than ten. Assembling the necessity of the narrative in my mind, there was a raw twisting, and fracturing of the passive act of flipping pages of a coffee table book - like cotton candy threads being separated, infinitely unmendable.