If This Father And Daughter Photo Tribute Does Not Make You Cry, You Can Change My Name
Ivana BelegisaninApril 17, 2020
2 minutes read
It’s never too late to say goodbye and express your love to someone. After reading this, you may cry for a husband like Ben but, he’ll always be hers first. As they get ready to leave their first home with heavy hearts, Ben and Olivia Nunery relive the fondest memories spent in that house with Ali, who they lost to cancer in 2011. Melanie, Ali’s sister, is the photographer for this heartwarming photo-shoot and hence, she has made sure it is the best ‘goodbye’ to her sister.
Behind the doors they stand, remembering Ben and Ali’s wedding day and the first day spent in this new house in 2009.
“I wanted to be able to show Olivia the place where her mother and I started our lives together and dreamed of raising children,” says Ben. Although the dream called ‘Olivia’ came true, through remembering Ali with Olivia Ben makes sure Ali plays an equal part in Olivia’s ‘growing up’
Cherishing this beautiful bond between a father and daughter, Ben hopes for his daughter to remember her mother and this home, where she was born, forever and ever.
As Olivia walks across her first home to absorb as much memories as she can, she can’t help but display her mother’s traits in her. She picks up Ali’s curling iron to play with it and poses just how Ali did on her wedding day.
The same stairs and the same Ben, only this time it’s Olivia waiting for Ben to walk down instead of Ben waiting for Ali to walk down the stairs.
Olivia, 3, looks through the fence of the staircase, with a face full of questions.
Ben holding his daughter’s hands with as much confidence as he held Ali’s hands on their wedding day, promising a world full of love and happiness.
“This isn’t a story about grief and loss and hurt. Yes, I’ve gone through those emotions and still do but that’s not what I want people to see in these photos. This is a story about love,” says Ben.
Reflecting her mother’s smile, Olivia poses with her father just like Ben and Ali in 2009.
Ben and Olivia hold hands with the glass angel that Olivia calls “Mommy” sat at the centre.
“The memories of Ali don’t live in that house…They live with us, in our hearts,” expresses Ben about his late wife.
Olivia holds a white feather in her palm that she found during the shoot, that reminds Melanie, the photographer and Ali’s sister, of Ali. Melanie often receives signs of her sister’s presence like feathers fall out of nowhere many a times, she says.
Olivia will have more room to play in their new home, which is why Ben and Olivia are shifting at the first place.
Ben plays his wedding song Stevie Wonder’s “I Believe (When I Fall In Love With You It Will Be Forever),” for Olivia that he has learned to play recently on the ukulele.
Olivia hugs her father, her family for life.
“Our lives will continue down a curvy and uncertain path, but Olivia and I will be able to look at these photos and know that for a short time there was a place where I was the luckiest man in the world, even if just for a little while,” says Ben.