Documenting Life: Photography and Metastatic Breast Cancer

Over the weekend, we had a photoshoot. It’s not an abnormal experience, in fact I’ve prioritized photoshoots with my family for Christmas and Mother’s Day every year since my de novo Stage IV Metastatic Breast Cancer (MBC) in 2017. This past weekend was our annual Mother’s Day photoshoot and I can’t wait to see the results in a few weeks. I’ll probably share the best ones; at the same time, one of the poses took my breath away and not in a good way.

I do enjoy photographers who have different and creative ideas for pictures and the photoshoot this weekend was in a greenhouse where the light was just amazing with a photographer who fit that description. And my boys are so photogenic and cooperative, we always get amazing pictures of them both. The photoshoot started out that way, and it was a lovely experience overall — we will wait with bated breath until we get to see the pictures.

And then she had the boys sit on the floor hugging one another and me sit on the couch behind them. She focused the camera so that my boys were in full view and I was a bit blurred in the background, watching over them fondly. That was the one picture she showed me on the camera and it was gorgeous and took my breath away.

I am so focused on these photoshoots, to document how I’m still here with them, to have something meaningful for them to look back on when I’m gone but I don’t always connect to the emotions involved, being so focused on now, on the present. The purpose is indeed to help them later see how I will always be watching over them, in this life and the next. The purpose is indeed to show them how life goes on even when we have lost someone we love.

And it is so damn hard to think about that.

This past week was full of anniversaries involving people in the MBC community who have died. When I see these reminders on my calendar, I often go back into my photo reel and look at pictures I’ve saved, some that I’ve taken. Seeing pictures of people who have died with their families and thinking of how someone else will be going through their photos at some point, remembering me, can be difficult. And there are tears, many tears, both happy and sad. Happy that I have these reminders of moments that are meaningful and important and so sad that so many people are no longer with us because cancer is a thief and steals lives.

And so we will keep taking pictures, keep focusing on the present, keep documenting what is happening now, all the fun and smiles and tears and love. We have to be in the pictures now to be able to look back later.

And as much as it breaks my heart, that picture will be their reality at some point.