I have a hangover: the power of the picture

I currently have a vacation hangover…only I wasn’t really on vacation. If you follow me on Facebook, you saw that one of my dear friends from high school just lost his wife to cervical cancer. She was only 48. Jay’s friends rallied and several of us road tripped down to Nashville to Jill’s service last week. It was beyond sad and my heart aches for Jay and his kids, but amongst the sadness, there was so much joy in getting together with old friends and sharing memories.

The pictures…
Jay and Jill had reached out to me several months ago and said they had some projects for me. At the time, I suspected they were related to end of life planning, but I wasn’t sure because they also have 2 beautiful, talented kids and we all know that kids need albums, right? So when Jill died, I reached out to Jay and asked him if I could help with the pictures for the service. He said yes and I am so thankful.

I set up a Dropbox and Jay started sharing his memories. Like with any client, I looked at all of the pics and started categorizing. Now I knew that their family had done a ton of traveling. They’ve lived overseas for most of their 25 married years (Jay is a Lt. Col. in the Army), but what I loved so much was how those travels were reflected in their pics. My favorites…their selfies. The love reflected in those pics was unmistakable. It was also beyond fun going into my old albums (the sticky kind...I need to get those saved) and finding pics of the two of them while they were dating. We had boards of Jill as mom, a family board of their travels, and one with pics of the lives she touched, including comments that were posted about how Jill’s presence impacted their lives. She was an amazing woman.

I can’t explain how cathartic it was for me to work with Jay on this project. It was truly a gift.

Pictures do that.

Reliving the memories…
This is where the hangover comes in. My mind is still working overtime thinking about our adventure. There is something about old friends. I got absolutely NO sleep for 3 days while on this trip. We spent every night staying up late and laughing until our stomachs hurt reliving old memories. We also made AND captured new memories that I will cherish forever. I look forward to reliving these new memories the next time we gather.

Don't wait... We are right in the middle of Save Your Photos month and it’s personal experiences like this that make me even more crazy passionate about keeping your memories safe. Pictures bring memories to life. In moments like this, you won’t think twice about the amount of time that it took, or the money you spent to do it. You will just be grateful.