35.

The Photograph

Gratitude   is  not only    the greatest    of  virtues,    but the parent  of  all others.

—CICERO (106–43 BCE)

Four months after my departure from the hospital, my birth family sister

Kathy finally got around to sending me a photo of my birth sister Betsy. I
was up in our bedroom, where my odyssey all began, when I opened the
oversized envelope and pulled out a framed glossy color photo of the
sister I had never known. She was standing, I would later find out, near
the docking pier of the Balboa Island Ferry near her home in Southern
California, a beautiful West Coast sunset in the background. She had long
brown hair and deep blue eyes, and her smile, radiating love and
kindness, seemed to go right through me, making my heart both swell and
ache at the same time.
Kathy had affixed a poem over the photo. It was written by David M.
Romano in 1993, and was called “When Tomorrow Starts Without Me.”

When    tomorrow    starts  without me,

And I’m not there   to  see,

If  the sun should  rise    and find    your    eyes

All filled  with    tears   for me;

I   wish    so  much    you wouldn’t    cry

The way you did today,

While   thinking    of  the many    things,

We  didn’t  get to  say.

I   know    how much    you love    me,

As  much    as  I   love    you,

And each    time    you think   of  me,