I finished the model ship my son left in pieces

Dear Delyara, My son and I built model ships together when he was young. After he died at thirty-two, I found an unfinished one in his apartment, pieces still attached to plastic frames. I brought it home and left it untouched for four years. Last winter, I started building again. Ten minutes at first. Some days I could not continue because his fingerprints seemed to be on every instruction page. Slowly, the hull came together. I refused to correct two mistakes he had already made before he died: one crooked railing and a mast drilled slightly off-center. Today, I attached the final flag. The ship looks imperfect. Good. My son was impatient and terrible at tiny railings. I placed it beside the models we completed when he was a boy. Hobbies did not give me closure. They gave my hands somewhere to spend love that had become physically unemployed.