I remember

I remember the first time I saw a picture of Mt St Michele.  I was about 5 and my father was rebuilding an airplane with a lifelong friend of his.  The wings were in the dinning room of Bob's house.  A painting of Mt St Michele was in the hallway.  I fell in love with it.  I had no idea where it was.  There was no explanation of the painting.

Decades later, after my first visit to Normandy, I had a collection of photos published in a book and gave my parents a copy for Christmas.  My father showed the book to Bob, he cried and then explained.  He was in a landing party on D-Day, he watched his friends drop around him in a hail of machine gun fire.  He had bought the painting when he went to back to Normandy after the war to accompany with the remains of his buddies being returned to the states.  The painting was a reminder to him of the beauty of a place that saw so much horror.