One of the things I do to comfort myself is to look at pictures of our life with David. I especially liked looking at the pictures he took on his phone because it felt like I was looking at things through David’s eyes. Overall, his phone became my priced possession with so many things reminding me of him.

Several months ago, I lost the phone. It was unthinkable, I thought it was just misplaced and that I would find it. I was afraid to ransack the whole house in fear that I would have a complete breakdown if I did not find it. I eventually searched the house with no luck. I took my car to the dealership and had them remove the seats and look in any possible crevices for the phone. Still the phone was no where to be found.

It was lost, I had a meltdown, I felt like I was losing something that allowed a physical connection to David. At that point, my Sister reminded me that even though the phone was lost, David was good about backing things up and that we should be able to restore anything he backed up.

We looked on the computer and found possible back up for the phone. I was unable to restore the phone until I had an extra phone but it helped me keep my sanity that there may be hope in restoring most of the content of David’s phone.

Last week, my Sister used her old phone to restore David’s phone and most things were restored from his backup. His last backup was May 13, 2013, our anniversary. I had a huge sense of relief and spent most of the night going through the phone, looking at pictures, and reading text messages we sent to each other over the years.

Viewing the pictures also brought a great amount of sadness. I realize how much our lives have changed and how much fun David used to have with the girls. I tried to click slower as I approached the end of the album because I knew it would be the end of pictures of my daughters with their Dad.

Now, all we have are memories, no new pictures with Daddy for almost a year. David, how I wish you were here to take pictures of the girls as they played in your office. How I wish you were here to record them as you made them laugh so hard. How I wish you were here to take pictures with me!

One of the things I now appreciate the most about the pictures David took was that they simply reflected our life as it was and not like my pictures that are more staged for the camera. He used to tell me not to delete any of the pictures especially those that I believed looked less glorious.

Below is a picture of the girls from David phone.