Always Take The Photo...
I have two beliefs about photography:
1. Always take the picture.
2. Never shy away from being in them because you’re worried you don’t look good or aren’t thin enough or whatever it is.
This is one of my all-time favorite photos that I have ever taken, and I happened to come across it when putting photos in albums. It’s my mom and my grandma (her mom) at Thanksgiving of 2004.
We had just taken a group picture of the family and when I grabbed the camera off the tripod, I turned around to this. One month later, my grandma would be gone from cancer that, in this photo, we didn’t even know she had. (I always believed my grandma just couldn’t bear having my mom go before her.) Mom was gone just shy of five months after grandma. Some might look at this and see that in this pic, the cancer has already ravaged my sweet mama. You can see the swelling from the steroids, the bruises on her hands from the same. Her wig adjusted just right to hide the missing hair from chemotherapy and radiation.
But that's not what I notice when I look. All I see is this intense love between mother and daughter.
The look in their faces in this pic, the way they are squeezing hands, just gets me every time. A silent exchange of unconditional love. My mom couldn’t really speak by this time, and here is my 91-year-old grandma, silently letting her 61-year-old daughter know she was there for her. There is so much love in this pic, it makes my heart burst. I am so glad when mom went, she was greeted by her mother and father in heaven.
This picture represents what I miss most I think - having a mom to remind me that even in the worst moments, she’s there. Yet when I look at this, the joy I feel from this photo makes me smile every time. There is no sadness. Because even knowing what's to come, all I see is that love. All I remember is the crazy amount of love my mom and I had for each other, too, and how amazing it is to have that kind of love in your life for however long you are blessed enough to have it.
Sometimes I think I take too many photos, and then I see ones like this and I am grateful for being the crazy photo lady. So take the photo. Because every once in awhile you just capture one that tells a story words just can’t.
Comments