Losing a precious memory of a loved one can be a very painful experience for anyone but the joy of recovering it back again is unparalleled.
Alabama resident, Scott Christmas had lost a picture of his late wife due to Hurricane Sally, but thanks to the power of social media he was able to recover it again. He took to Facebook to say that a picture of his late wife, Amy Christmas, was always on the dashboard of his Jeep and the picture that was recovered was taken in April 2017, after “her first night home from the hospital after her first seizure.”
“A seizure that let us know her brain cancer had progressed,” he wrote. “The picture in question has sat in the same spot on the dash of her Jeep, now my Jeep for three years now.” Amy lost her battle with brain cancer three years ago and Scott has kept several photos of “the love of my life” on him. But while Scott and his daughter were traveling to Point Clear on Sept. 16 to check on Amy’s grave after Hurricane Sally roared through the region, the photo on the dashboard was swept out of the car.
“We stopped to get out and check and as soon as I opened the door a gust came through because my little girl’s window was down and the picture in question took off,” he said. Christmas said he thought the photo was lost forever until on Monday, Sept. 20, when he started getting tagged on Facebook. He was tagged in comments on a post on the “What’s Happening in Fairhope” Facebook group.
Kimberly Daniels Hansen, the wife of Bjarke Hansen, wrote that her husband had found the photo when they returned to their Fairhope home to check on the damage from the storm. “Suddenly, I saw something laying over here in the grass…It was upside down. A piece of paper I thought. I lifted it up and saw it was a beautiful woman on the picture…and thought — oh, who could that be,” Hansen said.
Kimberly shared the picture in the group where others identified her as Scott’s late wife. “It was very emotional,” she said. The photo was wet but still in good shape. Scott shared the lengthy story on Facebook, with a special message to the strangers who spotted the photo. “Thank you Kimberly and Bjarke. You all were a light within a storm,” he wrote.