There are three people in the photo, two women and one man. The camera recorded this image outdoors, on a gray day, in a cemetery. The black and white image is clearly old. From another time.

The man is in a coffin and he is, without doubt, dead. The coffin is standing upright, though leaning back a few degrees in order, I assume, to insure that the corpse wouldn’t pitch forward, out of frame. Because what’s a corpse photo without the corpse? 

The guy looks pretty darn awful. Utterly, undeniably dead, and terribly, terribly unhappy. Two glum, plain-faced women, both in long plain black dresses, stand on either side of his container. Probably wife and daughter. Their look toward the camera is no warmer than his, just with their eyes open. They both look like the farm wife in Grant Wood’s “American Gothic” only maybe a little sadder. Maybe their mouths are a bit more downturned. Sad they were, but not terribly, terribly unhappy like the enboxed gentleman. I assume this was because they, unlike Dad, were still alive.

My grandmother had this photo and that’s how I came to see it. Assumedly the people, living and dead, were family to us in some fashion. I’m guessing my sister has the photo now. She can have it, she can keep it. I don’t want it, wouldn’t have it. I don’t care to stare at the dead, kin or not. I saw it once and that was enough. That was too much actually, because I still see it. 

Like right now.