At midnight on the night before going to make funeral arrangements for my grandmother, I was sitting in the floor sifting through a giant Rubbermaid container full of old photos looking for a nice picture of her for the newspaper. There just weren’t any! There were lots of photos of my grandmother taken over the 90 years of her life, but everyone I could find had other people with her. It should also be noted that photography skills (except for myself 
) are not my family’s strong suit. There were more than a few pictures with heads cut off, or someones finger in the shot.
I have been doing photography for the last five years and all of that time my grandmother was in the nursing home. I should have taken pictures, but nursing homes are not really conducive to great photographing conditions. I felt frantic and sad. The best photo I found was this one which was taken in 1942. We settled on a snapshot from Christmas for the paper but I am still kicking myself.
So….the moral to the story is. Take pictures. Take them yourself and get them professionally taken. Preserve those memories. Kids grow up (way too fast), and people get old. Things change. In my opinion there is nothing more important than photos of the people we love so much.
