The Importance of Family Photos

My dad passed away in April of 2024. While my family and I were gathering photos to give to the funeral home for his viewing, I realized that I don't have nearly enough pictures of my dad.

Me and my pops at a birthday party some years back.

While I'm digging through my Google Drive, an old external hard drive with all my phone pics, and some SD cards from my mom's old cameras, I felt like I couldn't breathe. Is this what an anxiety attack feels like?

I've been wanting to take my folks to the beach and snap some black and white shots with my Pentax 645, just to have some really nice prints of them. I realized that about 65% of the family photos at my aunt and uncle's place are ones I've taken. Plus, my grandma, who's in her 80s, has been wanting a recent picture of my parents to add to her wall collection.

I never took them.

I'd get home from work and think, "Tomorrow will be better; I'm just tired now." But I never took them. The weekend would roll around, and I'd say, "Maybe later, I've got other stuff to do." But I never took them. Something would always come up, and I'd find a way to convince myself that I'd get around to taking the photos I really wanted to take... but I never took them.

When my pops started getting worse and spending more time in the hospital, I couldn’t shake this feeling of doom, and all I could think about were those photos. He was in the ICU for a week, home for a day, back in the hospital for a day, and then home for five days. During that time, he was too weak to worry about going to the bay so I could use the water as a backdrop. I kept telling myself he was going to get better, and once he felt a bit stronger, we were definitely going to take those pics! I swore to myself right then and there, we were going to make it happen.

He got worse, and this time he was in the hospital for 16 days. I stopped by every day after work and snapped pictures with my phone, but those aren't the ones I'm going to print and hang up. I just needed to take them. I wanted to believe he was going to pull through. As you already know, he didn't improve. My dad knew what was coming, even though I tried to convince myself otherwise.

He wanted to go home and rest.

Tuesday night, he came home in an ambulance and went into hospice care. Everyone showed up—my sisters, brother, nephew, grandma, mom, my kids, and aunt and uncle. He mentioned he was a bit hungry, but by the time we went to grab some pudding and got back home, he had already fallen asleep. He was awake from 11 PM to midnight.

It's 3AM on a Thursday morning, and I'm right there with him. My sisters, brother, mom, and grandma are all pacing around. It's happening. As I watch the man who’s been there for me since I was 4—the one who taught me to fish, ride a bike, and change my brakes, the one who showed me what responsibility means—take his last breath, there are no words for the pain and sorrow we all felt. What was once just a nagging feeling has now turned into a heavy regret for not making the time, thinking I had more of it.

Now I'm stuck with these cell phone pics, and I'll never get to see my mom and dad together in black and white on the wall like I wanted. So if you're reading this and you've got a camera, I'm begging you—make sure you snap pictures of your loved ones often. Don't stress about your hair, makeup, or that coffee stain on your shirt. Just have a blast taking photos until your memory's full or you run out of film, or both. We never know when the last photo we take will really be the last one.