Inside, I kept David’s old Army T-shirt, the photographs from our deployments, his military bracelet, and the folded blanket he had bought when we learned about the baby.
The box had once held the belongings my family ordered out of my bedroom.
Now it held the pieces of David’s life that I would give our daughter when she was old enough to understand them.
One evening, I found my mother kneeling beside it with a package of archival sleeves in her hands.
She did not open the box.
She looked at me and asked, “May I help you protect these?”
I considered the question before answering.
Then I sat on the floor beside her, lifted the lid myself, and handed her the first photograph
