There was already a yahrzeit candle burning in my home on the morning of November 22, 1963.

As I ate my breakfast that cold Friday morning, watching the flickering light in the glass jar, I could never have imagined the national tragedy that would unfold in just a few short hours.  By evening, memorial candles would be lit across the country.

Even before 1963, November 22 was a day of tragic remembrance for my family. My maternal grandfather, Arthur Joseph, died way too young at 54 on that day.

November 22, 1947, was a Saturday just like today.

It was Thanksgiving vacation, and my then 21-year-old mother Betty, was visiting from college to her family’s sprawling apartment on West End Ave in N.Y.C..

She was awakened early that morning by the blaring sirens of ambulances, not an unusual sound in the city. But the tumult, sights and sounds inside her home were very unusual- men rushing in and out of her parents’ bedroom, a family doctor racing about, his stethoscope bobbing up and down as he ran, a glimpse of her father encased in an oxygen tank, all became a blur.

In the blink of an eye, this Daddy’s girl lost her daddy. I always felt my mother never quite recovered from this primal, unexpected loss, and a hint of sadness always lingered behind her eyes.

In time, he would become mythologized, cast in a golden light so that he and his times became our own Camelot.

For the rest of her life, the small framed photo of her father stood on her bedroom bureau next to the Lalique perfume tray filled with exquisite perfume bottles of all shapes and sizes.

Though I have hundreds of photos of my shutterbug-loving grandfather, this picture is evocative because it was so cherished by my mother. After my mother passed away, that small framed photo came home with me, where it is displayed on a shelf in my living room next to other pictures that tell the story of my family, especially of those no longer here to tell their own.