Goodbye Pics

Remember when I described "the goodbye" at the airport and the guy who was taking our pictures? I was, ummm, not very happy about it. I was also worried that he might be some anti-war whack job that was going to use pictures of my family in some anti military propaganda blogs or whatever.

I thought I had lost the guy's phone number, but when I got my new phone, I was moving numbers over to it, and I found his number. (Remember, N and I had a disagreement about what his first name was. N was right. That's why I couldn't find the number--I was looking under John. His name was Frank.)

I thought about it for a while, and I ended up calling him. He was a nice guy. He's a veteran of some sort (he was here in town because he was going to the VA hospital). Apparently, he really did think that he was doing us a favor. He said he would mail them to me if I wanted him to. He also said some news station was asking for pictures of soldiers and their families and he thought about sending them in, but didn't want to do it without my permission.

I told him that I wasn't comfortable with that, since I would rather know what someone's motivation was before giving them our photos, but that I would like to have them.

He didn't get around to mailing them to me for a while, and then he called and told me he was coming back here to see another doctor, and he would bring them to me. I met him in town, and he gave me the pictures, but he said he lost one of the memory cards that had most of the photos on it. It was kind of a bummer to drive that far for just a few pictures, but I guess that's ok. These seem to be the ones he took from far away, so he must have lost the card he used when he got braver and moved closer to us.

Anyway, they aren't very good quality, but here they are. Just so you know, there IS a picture of me hugging him goodbye, but it is from the back of me...I just can't bring myself to publish such a thing!