For me one story

Portrait of my father 
black marker on bond paper
7 x 9 inches
Barbara Muir © 2010

September 11 will always be remembered for the horrific attack
on New York City.  But in my life it is also about the death of my
father much too soon.  So I remember this day.  I remember
my father calling me his nickname for me "my beautiful Bibby,"
when I held his hand as he lay dying.

He died of lung cancer. In his teens he started smoking 
the strongest, unfiltered cigarettes. He gave that up when I was 
a little girl, at my mother's insistence.  But by that time his
lungs where affected. Plus he had worked in the navy on ships
with very strong radar. 

Today what matters is that I love him, and miss him. He
was a very strict parent -- and later apologized in a moving
letter to me about not understanding little children. And he
was also loving. He deeply admired my art, and encouraged
me. And he was a wonderful painter himself. 

I think his legacy to the family is the beautiful photographs
he took, and developed in his darkroom in the basement of
our house in Ottawa. They are amazing.  When we moved to
Toronto, the house was more stylish, and there was no room for a
darkroom. So my father switched to colour photography, and didn't make
his own prints.  And he began painting. 

I think his work life was also much more demanding, and he didn't
have time to figure out where a darkroom would go in a house with a
finished basement.  Plus his children were growing up, and life changed. 

For the last five years of his life he struggled with emphysema and 
pneumonia, and finally lung cancer. 

If your Dad is alive, give him a hug, if not, I feel for you. I 
certainly miss my Dad.

Have a loving your life day.