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I knew the part of her that aged and that loved the color red and always embraced her loyalty to the United States Navy and the United States Marines where she made a career, friendships, and a brief marriage. I knew her when she spoke her mind or sometimes spoke without any mind at all—her bawdy outbursts making a room of family simultaneously blush and burst with tears. I knew that part of her because it was so bright, and red, and gleamed with her name and face. That part of her is forever washed onto others—that part of her still makes family remember her with wry smiles. We remember her for being able to make us exasperated and amused—and that made us feel very alive in our skin. She was honest as daggers and as loyal as a book. And I knew the part of her who spoke hard and pointed words aimed right between the eyes, and her stubborn, tough Italian shell, impossible to penetrate--but the complimentary side of her was there too. I love having lived to see the fragment of her that I saw smile, genuinely happy to see family, often around a meal around two tables pushed together around neighbors popping in and being invited to sit and join us around her yelling over the cinder block walls of her yard, to her neighbors, and passing plates of pasta and meat, sharing what she had made and served to a house full again—she loved that—around and around and around—food and family, family and love, and the power of sharing what you had and passing it on to everyone and anyone, around and around and around. So, I am not quick to dismiss a photograph—any one photograph could be a fragment of her that I did not know, a fragment I can polish and set into place in my life with the other colored stones of my memories. Otto Frank once said of Anne, “I only came to know my daughter through her diary.” Similarly, a photograph is a diary entry—a thousand unspoken words. In this case, those words are captured above in soft grey, satiny white, and a smile. We are more than the sum of the memories of others—we are the shattered fragments spread throughout all of our relationships—no one person can sweep together all of our shards and dust of life into one complete portrait. Yet, this photograph of my aunt is an artifact I am proud to hold and read and wonder and love.