Thursday, January 2, 2014

The Past Remains

I'll state the obvious to begin. 2013 is history. The things you said and did are in the past, lost to a memory that will only give you bits and pieces except for the most profound moments, and even those will likely lose clarity with the passage of time. There will be exceptions, just as there are for me. My most noteworthy instance is the purest example of love between a daughter and her father that I've ever seen. It came as an 88 year old man experienced his 64 year old daughter saying "I love you dad" for the last time. Moments before, her senses had been dull for about 5 hours. He stood out of her line of sight for about two and a half hours. When she finally caught sight of him near her kitchen, she asked to bring him over by her hospital bed in the living room. When he approached, the morphine induced haze was swept away like driftwood with the rush of a strong wave. Clarity in her eyes gave way to a deep and abiding love. As he took his place by her side, her eyes resonated with a lifetime of emotion, and she expressed her love simply, but deeply. It is an image I will never forget, even though I had no camera in my hands and I never took the shot. Speaking from a deeply personal experience, the pictures you will regret most in your life will be the ones you never take, like the one I described above. The daughter was my mother Doris, in the final hours of a ten week battle with Stage 4 Breast Cancer. The old father was my Pepere (grandfather for those of you who don't understand Franco-American French), Henry. It's not about technical expertise, it's not about gear, it's about the preservation of the human experience in the moments that matter. And you might be surprised, when you look back, which moments mattered most. It might come in a child's playful silliness, or it might be the triumphant return home from a fierce battle in another corner of the world. For our soldiers fighting our enemies throughout the Middle East, the innocent silliness of a child brings peace and hope for a brighter future, and resolve to see a difficult mission through to a successful return home. The same is true for an American Pastor now imprisoned for 15 1/2 months in Iran for believing in Jesus Christ instead of Mohammed (Saeed Abedini, father of two, missing his wife and children and enduring the torture of an Anti-Christian regime daily). So for 2014, resolve to observe and preserve life best as you can. It's an easy resolution to follow through with, and it will bring you treasure, but not prosperity. Don't worry about the $5,000 thirty-something megapixel camera and the $2,600 lens. You only need those if you intend to make a living at photography by commercially selling large prints, and that market is incredibly hard to have success in (I know because I've been trying (unsuccessfully) to do so for 3 years. In fact, when I started this quest, I still owned the home overlooking the Atlantic Ocean where that treasured moment between my mom and her dad happened. Like the woman at the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, I was holding on to the that home with every last ounce of resolve. Like Indiana Jones, I was forced to see reason before impending doom and resign myself to the fact that to live my life, I had to let it go forever. The past can only exert as much influence on our present and future as we will empower it to. By the way, about observing and preserving this life we live, my mother took a photo once while observing my dad and I driving down Route 1 in Scarborough in a go kart during a firefighters convention. My brother and Uncle were riding on adjacent go-karts. It was the last photo I had taken with my dad, he died that December. 25 years later, my cousin Shelly took a photo of my mother and I at Christmas, which ended up being the last photo I would have of us together. Within 2months, she was diagnosed with Stage 4 Breast Cancer. As I said, when you take those pictures, you will find treasure, but not prosperity. May 2014 bring the peace of the Heavenly Father and His Son to your life and heart.