The Last Time…
You know how when you start looking at buying a particular car you start seeing that car everywhere? Maybe that’s what’s going on with me this week, I don’t know.
My Pa died this morning.
And I’m writing this while it’s fresh in my head, but it won’t be published for a couple days (Turns out the same day as his funeral) and maybe it won’t be succinct, it might sound like the ramblings of a mad woman but I wanted to get the words out unfiltered.
We knew he was going to die for the past 2 weeks, so this has been on my mind for a fortnight now and I haven’t really had the words until now.
You never know when the last time will be the last time.
Christmas 2019 Pa insisted on having an extended family Christmas. My cousin who lives in France would be home for the first time in a few years, so he wanted to have a family dinner and family portrait taken.
It had been this running joke within the family that every family event “could be the last one” but I guess it was never taken 100% seriously. No one could have guessed that a few months after this family portrait was taken, COVID-19 took hold of the world, My cousin not being able to return home, and over the course of the year Pa’s health declined. We got to see him again, but this was the last time our entire family was together with him. (It even looks different now, my sister’s partner is missing, one cousin has had a baby and another is pregnant with their second!)
With these thoughts running around my mind for the past couple of weeks I had a conversation with someone a couple of days ago, Dad had taken their family portraits right before Pa’s health had declined and he went to Albury to be with Mum, so I was handling their images, and he had come in to pickup their order. This family was also the family of my best friend in high school, she took her own life 10 years ago now, and in that time her two older siblings have had 5 beautiful children between them. My friend’s Dad said to me “I wish we had gotten just one more family portrait with Mel”.
Last week I photographed a family (who I will write a seperate blog post about soon) who’s child had died at 5 months old, just over 17 years ago. They very much wanted to incorporate this child into their family portraits as they didn’t have any with her in it.
Maybe it’s because I’m thinking about buying the car, maybe it’s just coincidence but I keep getting completely different signs from the universe telling me “You don’t know when the last time will be the last time” and I hate saying “photograph your family before someone dies” but when you put it bluntly it’s one of the really important reasons I do what I do. It’s why I insist on parents being photographed as well as children, because one day the photographs are all your children will have left of you, you should make sure they’re good ones. It’s why I encourage families to hire a photographer for extended family gatherings. It’s why I call bullshit when people tell me they “don’t have the time” because the time goes on regardless.