It was Ansel Adams who stated, “You don’t take a photograph, you make it.”
The truth is that photos help us to capture family moments and family memories. We focus the camera lens and snap the picture ceremoniously as we try to snatch the moment and the time together. Mr. Adams was correct that we make the moment in the photo happen and then we take it with us through time as we carry it along into our futures.
Don’t we all secretly wish we could revisit some of those frozen moments of times gone by? After my brother’s passing just a few months ago, I have secretly wished for more photos and more captured moments. Perhaps I just long for more time to spend with him and all of those who have gone on before me.
Just last week, another family member slipped from our midst as we bid farewell to the family patriarch. Franklin Reggero, a decorated WWII veteran and a beloved husband, father, grandfather and great-grandfather said goodbye to this world and journeyed into eternity to be reunited with his sons and our Savior.
There is a family portrait of my parents and my siblings that hangs on my bedroom wall. Not one or two, but all three of the men in that portrait are no longer here on earth with me. My oldest brother died of a brain tumor thirteen years ago and my middle brother lost his battle with cancer just three months ago and my father died of heart failure recently. I find myself staring at that photo everyday and wondering where the years have gone since we embraced one another and posed for that photo.
There was no fear of the future reflected in our faces. Nor worry over what the future would bring because it wasn’t possible to conceive that just a few short years later, the family photo and the family landscape would be entirely different. The reality is that there are people missing from our current family photos and their gaps can never be filled.
Humanity will always treasure family photos. It is in these photos that we can freeze-frame, tiny snapshots of family life when everything seems wonderful and life has endless possibilities.
Life cannot be measured in family photos but it can be reconstructed through photos. We can categorize our lives, moment by moment and frame by frame in our family albums. From the day we enter the world until the moment that we depart, there is a photo and a time for everything.
Psalm 128:6 states, “May you live to see your children’s children” and I suppose that my father was truly blessed because he lived to see his children’s children’s children.
