The small newspaper photograph shows my wife and our then infant daughter on Ash Wednesday.
Taken 40 years ago by the AJC's Nick Arroyo at Sacred Heart in downtown Atlanta, the photo ran in The Atlanta Journal, where I worked. Clipped from the newspaper, the small, intimate picture sits in a gold frame on a table in our living room.
My wife, who's already received her ashes, holds our month-old daughter as the priest with his thumb traces a cross upon her forehead.
For years on Ash Wednesday, I walked at lunch hour to Sacred Heart from the AJC building at 72 Marietta Street to receive my ashes, and hear the priest intone, "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return."
Walking outside after Mass, I felt part of something bigger. Lunchtime crowds swirled down Peachtree, and the Broad Street restaurants were packed. Lent had begun, but another spring would arrive soon, and the promise of Easter. So the years passed away.
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