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The following are two pictures not found in Vista Drive. For all the pictures I've taken in my life the following pair of pictures have been the hardest I've ever had to take. At the time I wondered if it would have been better not to take the pictures, but I'm glad I did. Memories fade, but the power of photography is the ability to capture a moment in time. The following pictures relate to moments in my life in which I wasn't sure about anything.  Camera: Canon PowerShot S500, Taken: 12.4.2004 @ 9:21 p.m., Exp: 1 sec. F/4.9, Altered w/: Photoshop This is a picture of a hospital room from the parking structure next to the hospital building. You might wonder the significance of such a plain and ordinary picture. It is a picture of the room my Grandmother stayed while in the hospital. All I knew at the time was that she was not well. The doctor had called us early in the morning after he received the results of some tests he ran on my Grandmother. The results were not good, so he asked me to take her to the hospital right away. Little did I know then that she had stomach cancer. As I went home the night I took this picture the prognosis was fairly good. My Grandmother was responding well to treatment. Yet something about the situation told me this would not be the last of the worries. It was a couple of days later that the doctors told us that they had found my Grandmother had stomach cancer. My mother had died of stomach cancer in 1997, so the diagnosis felt like a death sentence for my Grandmother. Perhaps she felt the same way because her spirit seemed to wane a bit after she was given the news. When I heard the words coming out of the doctor's mouth I felt as if a bolt of lightening had struck me. But, at the same time I felt numb. I vowed to myself that I would stay at my Grandmother's side and do my best to help her defeat the cancer. I can't say I was optimistic though, especially since I had lost my Mother to the same type of cancer nearly eight years earlier. I mustered whatever I could inside of me in order to fight the good fight in those days. I vowed that I would do anything that needed to be done to help my Grandmother survive.  Camera: Canon PowerShot S500, Taken: 12.8.2004 @ 11:25 a.m., Exp: 1/15 sec. F/2.8, Altered w/: Photoshop After the official diagnosis I cried to the point that I couldn't hold the tears in anymore. They seemed to be a permanent fixture in my eyes. A few weeks earlier I had ordered a book of my photography in order to give it to my Grandmother as a Christmas present. With the diagnosis I felt that I couldn't wait until Christmas to give my Grandmother her gift. I brought the book with me and gave it to her. I told her, "I was going to wait until Christmas...." and then I paused. I didn't have to say anymore, we both knew why I had brought it early. This second picture is of my Grandmother looking through the pages of the book I made especially for her. I picked out my favorite pictures, reedited them in order to make sure that they would come out looking great, and had the book made. That moment is one of my fondest memories because I was able to give my Grandmother something that wasn't just bought in a store. I gave her something of myself. In the weeks that followed the prognosis went from good to bad to worse. She passed away about two months later, leaving a void in my life that will never be filled. My mother's death pained me more than anything, except my Grandmother's death. We grew closer after my mother's passing. I considered her not just my Grandmother but my best friend. I lost my best friend when she passed away. As hard as it is to remember those moments I'm glad that I have the pictures to remind me of what happened. In life my Grandmother always reminded me that life is for the living, and to never take it for granted. As we all do I heard those words but didn't take them to heart, until she passed away. Today I heed those words. I was sad when she passed away, but as she said so herself her time had come to go. I can only hope to face life and death the way she did, with dignity and strength. She never flinched in the face of death, nor did her faith waver. I take those lessons with me as well. I believe that those who lose faith never really had it in the first place. True faith can never be tested because it is absolute. I miss my Grandmother very much. It was hard to share these pictures and the story that goes along with them, but not as hard as it was taking them in the face of death and sorrow. But nothing is difficult if you have faith in yourself. That's what I learned from my Grandmother's passing. |