photographs

Yesterday I ran into someone whose family I photographed this summer.  A few days after I photographed her family and I gave her the proofs  she had a sudden and unexplainable stroke.  Out of nowhere.  No warning, no indication, no explanation.  She was rushed to the hospital and her family was told by doctors that there was a 50% chance that she would make it through the night.  Those aren't great odds people.
This is a mother of two.  A woman who stood before me yesterday looking as though nothing happened to her two months ago - explaining to me what it was like for her.  She's not much older than me.  Her youngest is Miles' age.  She has survived.  She is well.  She is back.

But this isn't what rocked me....she went on to explain how she was so grateful that she had taken her family pictures right before that.  Because if something HAD happpened, if she HADN'T survived, those pictures would be her childrens' last memory of her.  Those pictures...pictures I took.  The picture of her little girl leaning against her lap that she's ordering for her room.

Pictures are important, and for this to come in the wake of our own family pictures - just taken on Sunday.....it moved me.  So now I will make a point to step out from behind the camera - to hand it over to my husband.  Not because I want more documentation of how exhausted I look, or of the sweatpants I pull on as soon as I walk in the door.  But because I need my kids to know how much I loved them.