Not the uniform portrait.

One I had taken years ago in the backyard — Walt in a lawn chair in a faded t-shirt, laughing, a bowl of homemade cinnamon apples in his lap.

Under it I had a small plaque engraved: Family isn’t defined by blood.

It’s proven by who stands beside you when you have nothing left to offer.

I chose that photograph on purpose, over the medals, over the uniform, over everything that would have looked more fitting on the wall of a veterans’ charity.

Because the medals were what the world had given him for what he did, and they were real, and they mattered.