Picture This...

I have a few pictures where I know something important about what was happening that you can't see in the actual photo. 

I have one from Halloween when we were in Colorado Springs and the office staff dressed up. It's me and Joanne (I think that was her name), we both dressed as witches so we took a picture together. 

At that moment in time an infection was working its way through my bloodstream and I was quite literally dying. It would still be a day or two before I would notice anything and get to the emergency room for treatment. And then two days after that on the follow up to my doctor before the NP would tell me how close I came to it going very very badly for me. 

I have family pictures that are the very last time I was going to see my father. I didn't know at the time that it was going to be the last. But every time I see those pictures I think, this is the last time I saw my dad. 

I have a photograph of Jack and Ann that was from the last time they visited before Jack died. Again, no way of know that was going to be the last time we saw him. But it was. 

And for years I had the photograph of my parents and the photograph of Brent's on the same shelf. I hadn't thought about the fact that those pictures were the last ones we had of our fathers. It wasn't a plan to put them together. Some sort of "before" shrine. It just happened. Once I saw it though, I couldn't unsee it. And I separated the photos. Except when I make our ofrenda. Then I put them back together. 

And there are moments in time where you sort of step outside of yourself and know this is where it changes. This is a moment that will mark before and after. And mentally you freeze that moment in your head. When Ann called to tell us Jack had died, I was sitting on the bed in our room and Brent was in the shower. Which is why I answered my phone. Ann had tried calling Brent's first but he, of course, didn't answer because he was in the shower. So she called me. I looked at my phone too quickly and thought it was my sister Ann calling not my mother-in-law so I was very confused as to what she was telling me. That and the fact that Jack was only 58 so we were not at all expecting that. 

But I knew that moment, that was a before and after moment. And right then Brent was still living in the before and I was going to have to drag him into the after. I would have to do the same with Katie after I told her father. You kind of step out of yourself and see the world differently.

I have a set of pictures that comes up in my on this day memories every year that work the same way. You can't see it in the pictures but everything was falling apart. And I remember as I was taking them, trying for some sense of "this is fine" to project out in to the world, I remember thinking most people wouldn't have these pictures. But you always will. 

Those moments where you step outside of yourself and view your life from a bit of a distance. Where you have to disassociate just a bit to make it through. 

And you will. 

There might be a before and an after, but if you keep going you will make it through. 

And you can decide if you keep the pictures.