oil painting.
Two boys stood in the backyard of our childhood home.
I recognized the tire swing.
The old fence.
The oak tree.
And the boys.
Eric and me.
They were facing away, looking toward something outside the frame. The younger boy—Eric—had one hand resting against the older child.
On the back, Dad had written that he started the painting after our mother left.
He could never get it right.
So he kept working on it.
The hardest part, he explained, had been capturing the light the way he remembered it.
Apparently, after all those years, he finally believed he had succeeded.
Then came the final message:
We had always belonged to each other.
We shouldn’t forget it. :chatgpt-content-reference{index=”3″}
Eric sat down on the garage floor.
Still wearing that ridiculous, beautiful red suit.
He covered his face.
I sat beside him.
Neither of us cared that our funeral
