It was also never too hard to tell how much she missed me, especially after we had spent time together while I was home on leave. A letter would arrive from her telling me how much she missed me, punctuated in mid-sentence by a tear drop. A tear that dropped like a bomb onto her inked words, shattering them apart and leaving only a sunburst pattern of ink fragments where whole words once were.

In the theatre of war, I would get to know bombs being dropped all too well. But the worst ones were the bombs that my love had dropped from her eyes and onto the paper which she used to compose her letters. These bombs went straight to my heart, and they did more than shatter words but hit the very heart I spoke of as well. These were bombs I could not avoid.

Whenever I would receive a letter marked with such sadness, I would always take out the picture Margaret sent me so I could look into the eyes that cried these now fossilized tears. The very eyes that I so foolishly avoided the first night we met.

I would stare at her picture, and I knew it so well that I could tell you how many of her hairs reflected sunlight as opposed to how many did not. Sunlight actually had a way of dancing off of Margaret's hair, it didn't just simply reflect off of it. I was jealous of the sunlight. I too wanted to know what it was like to dance with Margaret and to carress her silken hair as the sunlight often does.

Her hair was silk. And nothing proved it more then when the sunlight did dance upon it. Did you ever notice that when silk is in direct sun, it never really gets hot. Instead, it just gets warm, very warm, but never hot.

That is how Margaret's hair would get in the sun, very warm. It would never get hot as if to burn you but instead just very warm. It would get just warm enough to melt you when you touched it.

All this from a picture? Yes, and it's funny because I've heard of an Indian legend that stated: if your picture were taken, that picture actually captured your soul; therefore, they would avoid appearing in pictures at all costs. We believe that this is not true, but I know something else that is.

A photograph may not capture the soul of the person in the photograph, but it can certainly capture the heart AND soul of the person viewing it. From the very

first moment I laid eyes on her picture, I knew right then and there that my heart and soul were no longer my own. Instead they were now in the hands of the woman in this picture. For as long as she wanted them, they were Margaret Rishan's.

Margaret accepted my heart and soul, and we were married a month after I got out of the service. We made a life together, had children and grandchildren, and things turned out quite well. Margaret saw a seven and a four on her birthday cake but never did see a seven and a five.

The people in this room knew her as mother, grandma, etc... when they sang to her on her last

birthday, her seventy-fourth, a little over four years ago now. I knew her as my wife, my lover, and more importantly, my friend.

I just wanted to write you this letter, Maggie, to let you know that I still have your picture and that you, Margaret Rishan, still have my heart and soul. I know you'll never be able to read this letter due to the many words shattered by my tears, but I promise, I will read it to you, word for word, when I see you again... and I will I see you again. My wife, my one true love. Margaret of my heart.