Bittersweet

"Isn't it sort of sad?" She asked me.

I looked up from the photo album. She sat across from me in an old wooden rocking chair which creaked as she swayed back and forth, her bare feet tapping rhythmically on the slate-stone floor. The album sat between us on a short-legged coffee table, stained with years of tea spills, cookie crumbs, and happiness.

"All of these photos..."

Her fingers tugged on the glossy, laminate page as she drew her hand across amalgamation of photos, pasted haphazardly together to form a loose harmony of color and soul.

"Each one represents a time passed, whether it be happy or sad, triumphant or devastating. Time that we will never get back. Memories live among these pages, memories of people, some long gone and never coming back, that will live in our hearts forever."

"It's really kind of bittersweet," she said. "I look at these photos when I feel down and I lose myself in the memories of these highs and lows, of love and love lost, of time spent well and time wasted. It makes me long for the past. It makes me long to feel so intensely again. Most of all, though, it makes me smile."

"Isn't a sad smile the most beautiful thing of all?"