Thanks to the miracle of Tivo, I just finished watching last week’s episode of Grey’s Anatomy. And I find myself sobbing. (If you are a Grey’s fan who has not yet watched this past week’s show, please do not read further if you don’t want to know the story yet.)
Stories like this reach people in different ways. In this episode, one of the main characters, George, lost his father to metastatic cancer. As I watched George and his family say goodbye to their father, I relived an all too painful memory. Like George, I held my mother’s hand as we made the devastating decision to let her go, after a wrenching battle with breast cancer. And like George, I held her hand when she passed from this life and her heartbeat went still.
George said, “I don’t know how to live in a world without my father in it.”
I said those exact words when my mother died. My mother was my best friend. We were as much sisters as mother and daughter. We talked two to three times every day. And I still don’t know how I am living this life, how it’s possible she isn’t here.
Why am I writing this depressing post on my blog, and what does it have to do with photography?
Because it is why I do what I do. Losing my mother clarified my life in ways I can’t explain. It brought me closer to God and my family. It reminded me not to take for granted any single moment, and to cling to the memories like nothing else. My mother is gone and I miss her desperately. I have trinkets that were hers, that help me remember the memories. I have a sweater she gave me, a poem she wrote, cards sent on my birthday, even her favorite frying pan and her drivers license. Silly things perhaps, but important things that help me feel like a part of her is with me.
But what makes the real difference … what offers me a glimpse of her smile when I need to feel her near, which lends me a feeling of her warmth and love …
what lets me see her sparkle and remember the comfort of her hug …
what reminds me of a story we shared or a day spent together …
what reminds me of the way she adored her grandson from the minute she first met him …
what returns me to the elated joy she felt on my wedding day …
to the laughter of our last beach vacation, hunting for seashells on the beach …
to the last day we spent together as a family on Easter Sunday, giggling with my two year old in the backyard, just 10 days before she died …
… is the photographs. The photographs.
Life goes by in a blink. It is my business tagline, but moreover it is the reason I’m here. It is why I’m a photographer. Because life is a series of unduplicated moments that are gone in a blink. And we are blessed when even just one of those precious moments is forever captured on film. Whether it is a professional portrait or a snap on your camera phone, don’t miss a moment. Even if you don’t choose me as your photographer, make sure you capture every moment you can.
And cherish them.Â
Revel in them.
Share them.
Celebrate them.
