Photographs are priceless…I have always loved them….been fascinated with how they capture time….but now I truly understand and know why they are priceless.
On February 19th 2014 my life changed forever. I got a phone call around 10:30pm from my parents saying they were on their way in the snowstorm to the hospital because my brother had been in an accident but they didn’t have anymore information than that. I told them to drive safe and call me back as soon as you know something. I was playing Taboo with Adam (my amazing boyfriend) and his cousin and his good friend Tiffany. We were having a ton of fun. After the first phone call we went on pause anticipating the next phone call. After a while when they didn’t call back we began playing again. I figured he was injured but he would be ok. I figured if for some reason he was in critical condition we would drive to the hospital that night no matter how long it took. It was only moments into playing again when at 12:15am my mom called me back. She couldn’t hear me—I could hear her hysterics. I was screaming into the phone “Mom I can hear you, I can hear you” and then she said “He’s dead Patty, he is dead” I’ll never forget this moment. I doubled over and just broke down. There was no way this could be true. I fell apart. I am so lucky Adam was with me to get me home safely. A million questions raced through my head, a million things I said to him….he meant the world to me. I would have done anything for him. We were 6.5 years apart in age. He was my “little man” even though he towered over me in height.
The next day was horrible. I drove to my parents house and people came and left and brought food. There is nothing anyone can do or say. If you cant bring him back I don’t want to hear from you was how I felt. Trying to hold myself together for my parents. My Dad and I had to go to the bank to put money in so that we could pay for my brothers cremation. The words “Have a nice day” have never been so insulting and stung so bad. I lost my little brother, he was only 24 years old. There is nothing nice about that.
Its almost a month later now and not only does it not feel real but I am still struggling everyday to just go through the motions of life that I did everyday before that night. There is only the life before 2-19-14 and the life after. They are so different. As time passes it gets worse not better. I miss him more. It becomes more and more apparent that the memories and few photographs are all I have left. That he wont be at my wedding if I ever get married, and that I wont be at his. That if I were to ever have kids they wouldn’t know my brother. That all I have to show them are a few photographs. That all in all I didn’t see him that often. That in our adult lives I didn’t get to spend much time with him. My job….taking photographs….documenting not details but relationships at a wedding….that is valuable. You never know what’s going to happen in life and at the end of everything all that is left are the photos—the photos that feed the memories and bring those loved ones to life in your mind.
The point of this post is to remind everyone of what is really important in life….its not money or things….its family, friends, and fun. It’s the everyday moments you spend with people you love that make up the story of your life. It’s the photos that you take that will allow those moments and memories and people to live on not just in your mind but offer the physical picture of that person for the minds of people in years to come. What I do documenting memories is priceless. It is hard work and takes a trained eye….its knowing when to click and who to watch and where to stand….its being in the right place at the right time. Photography is important. In the end it is all that you have left.