“I almost believe that the pictures are all i can
feel.” ~Robert Smith

I lost something dear to me this week. Something I carried with me everywhere that I went. If you know me even a little, you know it was always with me.

I’ve always seen myself as a Photographer. Even before I could fully contemplate how to take a picture. Even before I owned my own camera. To me, it has always just been a frame of mind. (pardon the terrible pun)

Since I was a little girl, I looked at everything around me as if I were looking through a viewfinder. I remember staring at the ocean landscape on family vacations and as I peered out over the waves and the setting sun, I would find a specific spot of where to frame it to keep it locked away in my mind and in my memory.
Almost everything I saw could fit perfectly into my 8 by 10 scope of things.

I’ve never been much of a Material type of girl. If I lost something of any value, I didn’t dwell on it for long. Those things are only temporary, after all. You cannot take them with you when you leave this world.

My camera, however….

It may sound corny and you may think me foolish to say such a thing, but I truly feel as if it were an extension of me.

The way in which I see the world around me was somehow captured and frozen in time inside of this object that I carried with me. It understood me, it felt me. It just plain “got” me.

I have never before been so affected by the loss of something so greatly. I lost one of the diamond earrings my parents gave me for my baptism when I was 19. I was sad. But mainly because I knew my parents spent a fair amount of money on that special gift and because of my carelessness, it was now gone.

I lost my favorite black hooded Pea coat the year I met my husband. I loved that coat! But I could never retrace my steps properly in order to find it again. I still miss that coat. But I’ve also gained a good 20 lbs since then, so I wouldn’t be able to wear it anyway.

I’ve lost a treasure trove of sunglasses, eyeglasses, contacts, hair pins and Avon Lip Balms.

This just doesn’t compare.

I took well over 34,000 pictures on my Nikon. And now that number is simply a life span.
The life span of my dear friend that was with me for a short time, all of the time. And now, is gone.

It carried inside of it those pieces of me that I gave freely and happily.
I feel like those pieces of me are now gone forever.

There is just nothing more to say at this point in time. I feel a loneliness and a solitude with my dear friend now gone from me. I feel like I can’t go outside anymore because I will be forced to see the things around me but somehow, they just won’t look the same as they did before.

I know that I will eventually be able to replace it. Oh, dear….I can’t even believe that I just referred to my lost friend as “it”. But that is not what looms over me right now. I am trying hard to soak up what has happened, process it and be able to move ahead. It will just take some time.

Here is the very last photo I took with my camera….

Sort of poetic, isn’t it? Grasping something that you can’t possibly hold onto. Feeling it slip away from you. But you are powerless.
You can see it. But you cannot reach it. No matter how hard you try.

When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence. ~Ansel Adams