A/N: Ok, this is a tough one…A tear jerker for me so consider your self warned. I hope I do it well though and don't butcher the feeling I'm trying to portray. I love this song and pretty much cry every time I listen to it. Thanks from all my heart to the reviews from bb-4ever, McGiva, Nyre The Black Rose, and RowdyRomantic.

~B hearts B~

Today is my birthday
And all that I want
Is to dig through this big box of pictures
In my kitchen 'til the daylight's gone
This one here's my momma with the long brown hair
I'm forty years older today than she was in that picture there

She was 65 years old today. Another year, another birthday. It may seem like self torture but she does it anyway. She literally does what the song says. She sits down at her kitchen table and pulls out her box of favorite pictures. There are so many, and each one pulls at her heart.

She always looks at the pictures in the same order every year.

Her mother was about 25 in the picture she had in her hands. She was pregnant and holding Russ and her Dad was holding the camera. Those were the days before the running, hiding, and changing of names. She looked so happy and care free and wishes she had more time with her. Girls need their mothers. Temperance needed hers every day she was gone.

These are all my babies
Lord knows how we survived
The first one was hard and the last wasn't planned, what a big surprise
That's him with his daddy's eyes

The next pictures were of her two children. Her two precious babies. Sure they were 23 and 19 years old now, but they were still her babies. Kalleigh came 2 years after they were married. She decided the timing was right and they got pregnant right away. Turns out that was the only thing easy about Kalleigh. The pregnancy, the birth, the child herself was one drama filled moment after another. Looking back though, she wouldn't change it for the world. 4 years later came Kaleb. He was all boy from the get go. The spitting image of his father, which pretty much guaranteed he got almost anything he wanted. He mastered the same charm smile his father passed on to him, and he used it well. Her babies.

I loved the man in this one
It's faded but I don't care
There are nights when I wake up and know he's beside me I swear
Sometimes I still feel him there

This is where the self torture part comes in, the pictures of Seeley Booth. She lays them all out in front of her.

One is a copy of a picture they ran in the newspaper once. They were sitting outside the courthouse on a bench, drinking coffee. She doesn't remember why they were there or what they were talking about, but they looked happy.

Next is a picture from their wedding. Who would have thought the day would come that she would put a ring on her finger? Certainly not her, but she did nonetheless. The picture wasn't taken by the photographer they hired, it was taken by Parker with a disposable camera. Taken during one of the many dances they shared that night.

The next two are pictures taken the days their children were born. The two best days of their lives.

The last picture is the hardest to look at. It was taken a month before cancer took him. Cancer. She hated that word. He survived years of being an Army Ranger, Sniper, and FBI Special Agent, but it was something too small for the eye to see that took him away. He refused to die in a hospital, wanted to spend his last days in his home with the ones he loved most. She remembers when she didn't want to open her eyes and start a new day without him. Sometimes she didn't even know if she could. It hurt that much. She did though, she had to take care of their babies. She had to make sure they would always remember and know the man that was their father. The only man she's ever loved.

She wiped the tears that were falling down her cheeks, kissed the pictures of the one who still holds her heart, and put them all away. Away until next year, another year without him.

But if life stayed the way it was
And lovers never fell out of love
If memories didn't last so long
If nobody did nobody wrong
If we knew what we had before it was gone
If every road led back home
This would be the very last country song

~B hearts B~

A/N: The song is "Very Last Country Song" by Sugarland. If anyone was wondering, yes, I cried while writing this. Yes, I'm crying while typing that I was crying.