Complete Lake Superior Puzzle

It was fine snowing in Minnesota in November, and as Lily pushed open her grandmother's attic door through the snow, the dust billowed in the sun as fine snow particles. The 18-year-old had just finished her last practice test in high school and had been asked by her mother to sort through her grandmother's belongings, three months after Alzheimer's disease killed the man who always grilled meatloaf in the kitchen.

In one corner of the attic were faded sweaters and yellowing photo albums, and in a wooden box on the bottom floor a jigsaw puzzle in a tin box caught her eye. On the side of the box was a Lake Superior sunset, the orange glow of the sunset on the lake, the outline of a pine tree on the shore, but the paint was cracked, and on the edge was a small handwritten note that read, "To Ella, summer of 1958.". Ella was her grandmother's name, and Lily used to hear stories from her as a child about holidays in the Lake Superior.

Back home, Lily dumps the jigsaw puzzle on the wooden dining table in the living room. A thousand irregular pieces of the puzzle were scattered, mostly the blue of the lake and the light grey of the sky, a few with the warm hue of the setting sun. My mother came over with hot cocoa and smiled when she saw the writing on the front of the box. "It was your grandfather's first gift to my grandmother. They worked in a resort by the lake when they were young. They said it took them all summer."

Lily picked up a chip on the edge with the outline of half a pine tree printed on it. She suddenly remembered her grandmother sitting by the window last winter, awake, muttering, "The Pines by the lake are tall, and when the wind blows it's like singing." By then, Alzheimer's disease had made her unrecognizable, only the details of the Lake Superior. Lily decided to put the puzzle together, as if to retrieve the memories that had faded away.

The first few days of the jigsaw puzzle progressed slowly. The blue pieces of the lake looked almost identical, and Lily often misspelled and unwrapped them, his fingertips reddened by the cardboard. One night, staring at the debris, her mother pulled out an old photo album: "Grandma's photos from when she was young, maybe they can help you." The black-and-white photos in the album showed the young grandparents standing by the lake, behind her was the pine forest on the top of the puzzle box. Grandma had a jigsaw puzzle in her hand and a bright smile on her face.

Her grandfather's handwriting was on the back: "On July 15,1958, Ella found the last piece of the puzzle, in a crack in the rock under the Pine Tree." Lily suddenly noticed that the piece he had in his hand was half a pine tree, similar to the outline of the piece of debris in Grandma's hand in the picture. She worked her way down the outline of the pine tree, and sure enough, she found a match. That night, she put together the entire shore of the pine forest, orange sunset also gradually had a rudiment.

On Thanksgiving Day, relatives gather for a family meal and gather around the puzzle pieces on the table. "There's one missing," Lily said, his heart sinking. "I remember seeing this puzzle as a child. It was on the wall in the living room, she rummaged through the box of jigsaw puzzles and the bag of pieces, but couldn't find the last piece.

At dinner, my grandfather, sitting in a wheelchair, looked at the puzzle and suddenly spoke. Since Grandma died, Grandpa has said very little, now his voice was hoarse. "The piece of the puzzle fell by the lake. In 1960, when we took your mother on vacation with a full moon, a jigsaw puzzle fell out of our car and we lost a piece. Your grandmother spent the whole afternoon looking for it, and at last she sat by the lake and cried, he took out a small cloth bag from his pocket. "I went there again and found it under the old pine tree. I kept it."

Inside the cloth bag was a small fragment, frayed at the edges, on which was printed a small orange sunset that matched the blanks on the jigsaw puzzle. Lily took the piece and felt the warmth of the cloth on her fingertips, memories that my grandfather had cherished for more than 60 years. She gently placed the pieces on top of the puzzle, and the sunset was complete, with an orange glow just above the pine trees on the shore, just like the scene in the photo.

Lily's eyes welled up as he looked at the completed puzzle. "Your grandmother always said that puzzles are like life. Sometimes one piece is missing, but if you're patient, you can always put it together," she said, grandma remember a lifetime is not the puzzle itself, but with Grandpa looking for pieces of time, is the lake wind, pine song, is hidden in the fragments of love and companionship.

When winter vacation came, Lily took the puzzle to the Lake Superior. She keeps the puzzle in a special glass frame by the window of the resort where her grandparents worked. The sun shone through the glass on the puzzle, as if the orange sunset came to life, the shore of the pine trees gently swaying in the wind, really like Grandma said, singing.

As she left, Lily placed a new piece of the puzzle under the pine tree. It said, "Lily, 2024 winter, with Grandma and Grandpa." She knew that some memories never really die, like this one, even if a piece is missing, love will fill it up. And those hidden in the debris of the time, like a Lake Superior Lake, will always flow in the heart.