When I take a picture, it’s a multiple-step process. First, I view the scene with my naked eye. Assess the surroundings, the light, the scene to make sure everything is perfect. In a professional shoot I have the benefit of added light, but out in the field, I am dependent upon nature or circumstance. Once I have finalized the details, made sure my focus is clear, I look through the lens and start snapping. With digital, I have no worries about film or the cost. I can take hundreds of pictures, quickly, capturing every second of movement. Once I have as many as I need, I upload them onto my computer, analyzing each one to find perfection.
On rare occasions, something hidden finds its way into the picture. A person passing by, or an animal in flight. A child playing or a look between friends. Something I missed, because I was so focused on the vision in my head, reveals itself in the picture. With the unexpected addition, I am mesmerized. The picture has a new life, one I would never have foreseen. It changes the story; what I had hoped to say becomes altogether different. The new story is superior, told in a way I couldn’t fathom. Those are the moments when I especially love what I do. When the picture becomes the storyteller and I am the recipient of the story it tells.
“A matter of perspective,” David says, bringing me out of my thoughts. He comes to stand next to me, his warmth filling the empty space. He pauses, watching me carefully, gauging my reaction before he says, “Your dad’s condition is unchanged.”
I am between the wall and him, with no place to run. “Yes,” I agree quickly. “But we appreciate everything you’re doing.”
“Checking his vitals every day?” He leans against the wall, effectively trapping me in. “Don’t mention it.” He stares at a space above me. Trying to find the right words. “I’m sorry I haven’t been able to give your family more answers.”
The truth lies unspoken between us. My father’s death would not change my life, but his living would. I wonder what further damage he can inflict if he lives. I am already torn, and he can’t tear apart much more. But his death would leave me as I already am—irretrievably broken.
“Maybe there aren’t any,” I say, treading water. I have no place to hide, to flee to, without going past him. “Sometimes that’s life.”
It is how I soothe my soul—my explanation for why tragedy was mine when others lived a life filled with tranquility. When I was young, I would watch nature channels, fascinated by videos of a cheetah or tiger crouched, waiting. When the time came, it would run toward a herd of animals, increasing its speed until it had joined those running for their lives. In a heartbeat, it would attack, choosing one while sparing the rest. The others kept running, the instinct to survive strong. Was there any way for the lost one to live another day or was death simply its destiny?
“Do you believe that?” he asks.
“I have to,” I say, brushing past him to find my own space. I look around, envisioning the room expanding, a hole that I can slip through and disappear into forever opening up in the middle of the floor. “Otherwise, how do you find the will to keep going?”
It’s past time for me to return to what I know best—hiding behind the camera so I control the vision the world offers me. But David’s next question stops me. “You all love him so much,” he says, oblivious. “What did he do that was so right?”
I spent an entire night watching Trisha drink herself into oblivion because she refused to have her happily ever after. I listened to her call out for Eric in her sleep, her heart broken because her mind knew what her soul refused to believe—that he was gone. I coexist with my mother in a home that houses so many secrets the walls are filled with them, and yet it is the only shelter she trusts, the one she returns to night after night. And Marin, my own flesh and blood, has evolved into a woman I barely recognize.
“He made our life his own,” I say, the only answer I have.
“In my day, we didn’t have such fancy things.” William turns the camera over in his hand, inspecting it from every angle.