Take A Picture

In 2015 here in America, we do a lot to “remember” our experiences. We “tweet,” we blog, post pictures on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest etc, and yet, with all the documentation of our lives, we rarely take the time to embrace and cherish all of life’s moments, grand and ordinary.

My grandmother, Gloria Sanders Blackwell, or my “MeMaw,” as we called her, was someone who knew how to “seize the moment” and take pictures of most everything her friends and family did, long before Facebook ever came around. She did not just take pictures at birthday parties or holidays. She took pictures when we would be at home watching tv, when we would go out to eat together, and if we did not tell her kindly not to, she would have taken pictures of us at the mall or the movie theater.

This one habit of hers was something her four daughters and all of her grandchildren, myself included strongly disliked. However, we did not know how much we miss the clicking of her multiple cameras, until one day, she was gone.

In April of 2006, both my grandmother, Gloria Blackwell, and grandfather, Bobby Blackwell, were killed in a car crash. That one event almost nine years ago had a ripple effect which still lingers today in our family.

And ever since she left, though there have been multiple smartphones and electronic devices produced capable of taking pictures which all of us in our family have used, not a single one of us has taken as many pictures as “MeMaw.”

I recently saw the movie Boyhood. It was not a great movie nor one I’d watch more than once, but it was one that had merit due to its artistic quality.  In the film, the audience gets to watch a broken family, torn apart by divorce, as they try to make it through the first decade of the 21st century.

After I watched the film, and as I’m thinking about it now, I get why MeMaw took so many pictures. It may have been odd at times, but she wanted us to remember that life is a journey and that it is better spent with the ones you love and those that love you.

And in this chaotic world, to honor her memory, perhaps it is time for me, for us all to, in the words of Miranda Lambert…

” Pull the windows down
Windows with the cranks
Come on let’s take a picture
The kind you gotta shake…”

Until Next Time,

Jacobo