The short version of this story is that I tried to make an ‘alphabet’ using only the photos I already had in my files. I got pretty close. I had to take new photos to get the ‘k’ and the ‘p.’ The resulting picture is below. And below that is the more detailed version of this story.

A few years back, in late 2017 when my dad was still alive, I started a little contest with a young man who is a member of the organization I work for. We were in Ottawa at work events and celebrations for a few days. We were walking down Sparks Street, back to our hotel after a reception on Parliament Hill, when he started the conversation.

He wanted to do something to improve his photography skills, he said. I said I would love to do something to clean up my massive photo files. Over the past few days, I had happily handed over my camera to him at several events. I like to take pictures but I had no plans to be a professional photographer like he was thinking about.

We started to discuss what we could do to help each other out. We decided on a contest. We went through some strange ideas but ultimately went with something a little more tried and true. We would do an alphabet. The goal was to have pictures that would either look like the letters of the alphabet or make the viewer think of those letters when they saw the picture. He would take his pictures to make his alphabet so he could practice. I would go through my files to make mine so I could clean up my folders. We worked out that the contest would last a year. We would do two letters a month and an extra one in June and December to make up the 26 letters of the alphabet.

The contest was on! I was excited. Of course I involved my family. We get together as a group every Sunday. I would bring a selection of my pictures that represented a letter in the alphabet. Everyone would vote and that would be the winner for each letter. I brought a schedule and system to get all the votes as, sometimes, not all of us could be there each Sunday. We started in January 2018.

My dad had been sick for awhile and was in and out of the hospital for several weeks before and during this time. As a group, we made it to the letter ‘e’ before things got really bad. There came a point where dad went into the hospital and he didn’t leave. It’s hard to believe it that it has been three years since he passed. It seems just yesterday and awhile ago all at the same time. Although I don’t cry as much these days, it’s still very fresh in many ways. I miss him a lot.

When dad passed, everything else in life fell to the wayside. And this little contest was no different. My contest partner understood completely. It was inconsequential in light of such a major life event (to which dad himself would have commented “It’s all going through life.”).

Time passed and we reformatted as a family. It was probably a year later, close to the first anniversary of dad’s death that my niece Audrey brought up the ‘alphabet contest.’

And I gave her the same reasoning for its abrupt end.

But I kept thinking about it. And I had kept picking away at it sometimes. But it would make me sad and it would make me miss dad. These were some of the last pictures I shared with him and it was hard to go back to that time. But I also felt like I should finish it and be done – not leave it half way and hanging.

So I would pick a folder, find a letter here and there, and clean up my files as I was doing it. I was trying to keep to the original intent of the contest even if I was the only one left playing. I got to the point where I had everything but the ‘k’ and the ‘p.’  I put it aside and left it, knowing I had done all I could with what I had on hand.

And then last year, Audrey asked about it again (she is both wonderful and persistent!). So I resolved to finally finish it. I only needed those two letters but I would have to bend the rules a little and go find them somewhere and take a picture instead of finding them in my files. This past summer and fall I got both of them.

It remained a family affair as I got the ‘k’ with my sister and niece when we were visiting one of my brothers and his family. The final letter, the ‘p,’ was a post pulled from my backyard that my older brother and I put in there almost ten years ago.

That’s a lot of context for 26 letters – but there you have it. You may have to squint your eyes or use your imagination a little for some of these. Some of my family and friends may recognize these photos because they were there with me when I took them.

And because she is the one that kept asking, I call this ‘The alphabet for Audrey.’ I also think dad would have approved of the end result – even if I had to bend the rules a little.

You can view all the individual letters here. Click on each picture to enlarge and see the full caption.