Thanks Louise for sharing with me an image of #fadedglory here is your story.

This tale has now been recorded. Let me read it to you at Insta TV @erinmccuskey or scroll to the bottom to watch.

The smell was overwhelming. The room was cold, but it couldn’t hold the smell of thawing death from wrapping around his nostril hairs like tar.

He didn’t mind though. Rabbits were destructive where he came from, and he was grateful for such learnings as this little heart would share.

When he went home from anatomy class that day, he sat for a long time with his little girl. She always climbed on his knee for welcome home hugs that often ended too soon. Today he would sit as long as she wanted.

He was forever careful about every heart that came into his care.

Later that year he brought a rabbit as a pet for her, hoping that in time she would learn what caring for someone can teach us. He needn’t have worried. His daughter had taken well the lessons at her father’s knee.

She learned about hearts, and people who need care, and people who need love and the animals that can help people with all of that.

She was forever careful about every heart that came into her care. But sometimes she needed to be reminded that her own heart needed similar comfort. At those times she would look at photos to remember, much later, once he had gone. He looked old even then, in his youth, the way that black and white photos look back at us from the past.

And in his eyes, she would see, that he would be proud of who she had become.

LUXVILLE TALES story by Erin McCuskey | image by Louise.

The #LuxvilleTales are generated from reader contributed images. Submissions have now closed.