Photos can be a window through which you remember what you saw or photos can be a mirror where you try to capture your feelings, emotions from what is being photographed.
~ Bill
Surrounded by papers, pens, and books, I sit at my desk clicking through photos on my computer. I like taking photos. Grandma passed that to me for sure. She’s the one, after all, who clicked the camera and developed the hundreds of slides in slick-sided boxes I keep in an upstairs room. Like Grandma, my subject matter varies. Nature, architecture, people crowd the storage on my phone and maintain an address on my computer, all jumbled together like the pieces in an unopened puzzle box.
But tonight, I’m looking at specific photos, photos that grip my chest like a clamp in a woodshop, tightened so that no space exists between the pieces of wood. The tightening presses my ribs into my lungs so I can hardly breathe. I’ve suffered no injury and experienced no disease but the throbbing in my heart is as acute as the pain when I snapped a metatarsal bone in my foot years ago. A siren echoing down the otherwise silent streets mirrors the pain in my heart. It’s just a photo. How could it cause such a visceral reaction?
I’m caught in the web of a memory. Staring back at me, joy radiating from her bespectacled face, her arm resting on a silver-toned railing as hundreds of thousands of gallons of water pour over a cliff face behind her, sits my mother. Her bright pink t-shirt reflects the mid-June sun, outshone by the grin spread across her face. Though the medium of photography silences the waterfall behind her, I can still hear its roar, like thousands of disparate voices speaking at once. Just over two years from this moment, her voice silenced by death, I will choose this short-lived moment to represent her as I deliver a message of hope, a hope I do not feel, to comfort the family and friends gathered to remember her.
As she beams at me from the computer screen, guilt pokes my sternum with its bony finger. Ambivalent is the best word to describe the feeling that settled in my stomach when she suggested we stop at Niagara Falls on our way to Vermont. After all, what was the big deal about navigating crowds of thousands of people on a Sunday in June just to watch billions of gallons of water tumble over a cliff? But how could I tell her no when her eyes and face lit up like the ball in Times Square at midnight on New Year’s Eve in anticipation?
So, we go to Niagara Falls.
I like to take pictures of memories I’d like to look back on in the future.
~ Morgan
Mom’s excitement is palpable as we park my Tahoe and she pulls out a notebook. As I unload her rented electric scooter, she notes in her shaky handwriting, “11:13. We are parked at Niagara Falls State Park.” We traverse the crowds, Mom on her scooter and me on two feet. The sun beats down on our unprotected heads, and I think those tourists with umbrellas have the right idea. But no umbrella means both my hands are free. We meander from Horseshoe Falls to another observation point, and Mom tells me that this one wasn’t here when she visited more than 50 years before with her family. I pause to pull my phone from my purse to capture the power that overwhelms me. I take a brief video, the river rushing past me and throwing itself over the cliff to the rocks below, then another, capturing the joy on Mom’s face as she waves to the camera.
That smile, that wave throw a lightning bolt at my heart as I watch the video for – oh, gosh, I don’t know how many times it’s been now. The happiness in her heart reflecting on her face comes not from the fact that she is here but that we are here together. This time, this moment is for her and me. I flip the phone around, the lens now capturing the two of us in this moment. I’m not a fan of taking selfies but this one seems important. Mom’s open-mouthed smile tells me just how important it is. This is not a memory for anyone else but the two of us.
Only years later, after she is gone, this realization burns into my brain like a branding iron. As it does, gratitude washes over me like that mighty river. She is gone, but I have the pictures. So, I share the pictures on my Instagram and write:
Life is short, no matter how many years are in yours.
Since life is short, this is what I suggest:
– Tell them you love them
– Take the pictures
– Throw the party
– Chase a dream or two or three
– Try something you’ve always wanted to try (it doesn’t matter if you’re good at it or not)
– Use your voice (don’t be afraid that nobody’s listening. Someone will hear you.)
And most importantly:
Take the trip. Make the stop that you’re not that enthused about. Often those stops, planned or unplanned, become your most treasured memories…
Life is short. Embrace it.
Statistics tell me that, on average, we only have about 78 years in this life. Science tells me that, among other things, presence or the lack of it affects that number. But the pictures, standing at one end of a whispering gallery, utter their message at the lowest of decibels, “Be present. Be in the moment. Be aware. Be available.” Their words roar in my ear at the other end of the gallery like the Niagara River tossing itself off a cliff to continue its course to Lake Ontario, louder than the statistics, louder than the science.
“Take the pictures!”
I want to have pictures of the good times so I can remember them when bad times happen.
~ Allison
We return from Vermont refreshed and fall back into the routine of work and, in Mom’s case, doctors’ appointments. Her heart nearly kept her from my ordination and this trip. Now a pesky parathyroid affects her calcium levels, contributing to her osteoporosis, and needs to come out. Surgery is a success, and 2018 becomes 2019 shortly thereafter. Her heart put her in the hospital at the beginning of 2018, so as December 31st becomes January 1st, I half-jokingly tell her, “Hey, we’re doing better than last year. At least you’re not in the hospital to start the year off.”
Two months later, she is back in the hospital. Bacteria eat away at the tissue in her leg. For the first time, I exercise my power of attorney rights to authorize treatment and multiple surgeries ensue. She transitions from hospital to rehab facility, and every Wednesday night after church for six months, I pull through the Burger King drive-thru and settle two Whoppers and two fries in their greasy paper bag into the passenger seat of my Tahoe and two large drinks into the drink holders in the console. Darkness descends by the time I sign into the facility and head down the hall to her room where we inhale our Whoppers and chat about our day.
Almost as soon as she leaves rehab, her sister calls to tell her their father has fallen at home. He enters a rehab facility himself but his health quickly declines, and, in the early hours of the day after his 93rd birthday, Granddad reunites with Grandma. I sing at his funeral, and at the funeral dinner, someone suggests taking pictures of Mom and her siblings. Mom and her sister sit, their brothers stand behind them. I take several pictures of the four of them, their expressions ranging from serious to not-so-serious.
Unknown to me, these are the last pictures I will take of Mom.
The calendar flips from 2019 to 2020 in rapid succession. Mom is not in the hospital but with her health issues, the risk of COVID confines her to the house. She complains of being tired all the time, of not being able to breathe well, and her appetite drops off. I chalk this up to all the health issues she’s been through the last few years – her pancreatitis, her stroke, her heart, her diabetes, her bacterial infection. But the first Friday in July she wakes up so short of breath she opts for a trip to the local hospital. They run tests, find something suspicious, and ship her to her healthcare system’s main hospital. A bone marrow test on Saturday reveals a new diagnosis on Sunday: leukemia. She receives a port and starts chemo, and early on the second Friday of July, just five days after her diagnosis, I receive the call I wasn’t ready to get.
She is gone. And my world falls apart.
My siblings and I choose to cremate her and we set a date for her memorial service. I slog through writing a eulogy and message for the service, distracting myself by flipping through the photos on my computer to choose one to display. One jumps out. She beams at me from my computer screen, her bright pink t-shirt reflecting the June sun, a sparkling contrast to the gray and white of the waterfall behind her. I crop it to a head and shoulders shot, save it to a thumb drive, and print it out at the store I frequent the most. I carefully choose a frame – it has to be perfect – and head home. I finish up the message in time to deliver it at her service, a message filled with hope, the hopelessness in my heart masked by the smile on my face.
Once home, the mask comes off, and I search for the hope I’ve lost. Days turn to weeks to months to years and the hopelessness remains, a squatter ransacking my heart and mind. I scroll through social media but hope isn’t there. I binge-watch series on my streaming services but hope isn’t there. Then I flip open my computer, and click, click, click, I throw open my pictures folder. More clicks as I spin through the photos. And I stop.
They [pictures] are important because something I take a picture of is something that is important to me, either long term or in the moment. Sometimes it’s for a memory, sometimes for a lesson.
~ Val
I pull up the pictures from Niagara Falls. Pain shoots through my chest like lightning and tears stream down my face like the Niagara River plunging over the falls. Mom grins back at me, smiling for eternity. I click away from her face, desperate for the pain to ease. The pain recedes and the tears slow down as I focus on my pictures of the falls themselves until another picture stops me, my hand hovering over my computer mouse. Suddenly I stand again on the overlook at the American Falls, the overlook Mom told me wasn’t there when she visited the first time.
I lean over the railing, my phone in both hands so it doesn’t end up in the water, focusing the lens on the rocks below. The foam on the rocks is as white as new snow in January, the spray unfolding like a transparent paper fan. And there, just inside the edge of the fan, an arc of color fills my screen. The spray bends the June sun, revealing the colors within – red, yellow, blue, hints of purple and green and orange. The power of the falls creates the delicacy of the rainbow.
There it is, the reminder I’ve been seeking. The reminder that though grief can sweep me along like debris in a river, hope rests on the other side, just waiting for me to notice it. I may hit the rocks on the way down but they won’t stop me from continuing my course, however long or short it may be.
I click out of my photos and close my computer. As I swivel in my desk chair to turn out the lamp behind me, my gaze falls on the framed picture resting on the bookcase behind me. My mom grins at me from her position in front of Horseshoe Falls, watching over my shoulder as I spin my chair to shut off another light. I rise from my chair, a small smile creasing my face. Rounding the end of my desk, I glance through the dark of my office to Mom’s picture, locking my eyes with hers. Exiting my office, my eyes still on hers, I whisper, the smile still on my face and the slightest hint of tears in my voice.
“Good night, Mom.”