Anyway, about a year ago I wanted do do a hand print art with my kids, but wanted to include Cora, so I decided I was going to trace her foot print. When I pulled she sheet with the two prints on it from the memory box of cards and such I was devastated that they were so faded you could barely see them. It broke my heart, and has bothered me since.
Fast forward to a couple nights ago. I opened a box of trinkets and things that I packed up when we moved right after Erin was born, and haven't opened since. Owen, being his 2-year-old self has been pulling boxes out from where they're stacked under a counter and standing or sitting on them, so I wanted to check to see if anything was broken. And inside I found a 4x6 picture in a frame. This picture is of a feather that was laying on the gravel beside Jenny Lake the night before Matt and I (and a sister of mine and a sister of his) spread her ashes there. A single solitary feather with nothing around it. When I saw it, I felt profoundly that it was a sign that Cora was there with us. When I scrapbooked spreading her ashes, I wanted to include that picture, and left a space for it, even though I couldn't find that particular frame. So for nearly 9 years, there has just been a space waiting for it.
Needless to say, I forgot *which* book that page was in. And so I pulled out Cora's scrapbook (it wasn't in hers, it was in the one I have for me and Matt), and a just a few pages in, there were her foot prints. Her REAL foot prints. I had forgotten that they had taken several sets and that I had put the best in her book and the rest in the box that I had found the others with. And they weren't faded at all.
I cried. Big wracking sobs. Erin was in the room and very concernedly asked if I was okay, but I really couldn't describe just why I was reacting like I was. Brokenhearted joy is really the best way I can think of.
So I scanned that page, so I can have digital copies. And then I printed one, traced it, and made stamps out of it for an art project.
