A Photo I Wish I Had
On Dad's 27th Death Anniversary.
My childhood was filled with pictures—birthday parties, Christmas tableaus, school dances, and randomly hanging out at home. I have albums and framed photos with people I may or may not know and moments I may or may not remember. I have class photos with classmates I haven’t seen in years, and some whose names escape me completely. I have more pictures of myself than the mental bandwidth to recall, and very few things in my childhood transpired without documentation.
I have my father to thank for my well-chronicled childhood. Dad took up photography as a hobby, and in an age of film cameras, it was not without its inconveniences, not to mention expenses. But I think Dad did it mostly for fun. He liked snapping photos and putting them together in albums and picture frames. I not only have hundreds of photos of my life, but I also have them organized in albums and full-on framed collages (“Ella Mae at One” hangs on my childhood bedroom wall to this day).
Ironically, my most vivid childhood memory doesn’t come with a photo, and quite appropriately, I may add. The day your father collapses into unconsciousness isn’t something you would want a picture of. Nevertheless, I see that moment clearly: I see myself in a magnificent blue dress, lips greasy from our lechon manok lunch. I see myself emerge from the bathroom to see the hospital room in a scuffle. I see doctors and nurses rushing in and out, in and out. I see my mom panicking and crying at the bedside and my yaya running around trying to help. And in all that activity, I see my dad motionless, soundless, near-lifeless, when just minutes ago I was telling him what I wanted to be when I grew up.
That. That’s what I want a picture of. Not the suddenness and panic of his collapse but the moment just before that: the moment when I was telling Dad that, when I grew up, I wanted to be a queen. No, not a princess—a queen, I insisted. I wanted a palace, a grand ballroom, and a majestic staircase. I wanted a tiara to go with my long blue gown. I want a picture of Dad listening in, nodding, laughing, and enthusiastically buying into the whole queendom idea. I want a picture of us eating lechon manok, of how I complained that what I wanted was Jollibee Chickenjoy.
I joined a writing workshop recently, and one of the prompts asked us to describe a moment from childhood we wish we had a picture of. This moment came to mind immediately. But there are other moments, too: the time Dad took us to watch a basketball game, or when Dad told me he could drive with no hands, or even non-eventful days when Dad and I would watch TV in our room. There is so much I wish were documented, so much I want to remember, and so much I’m afraid to forget. It doesn’t help that Dad was mostly absent from these photos, being the photographer most of the time.
Photographs will eventually wither with time, and our memories can only hold on to so much. Even with the best-preserved photos, our memories will fail us in time, eventually unable to place a moment, a face, or a feeling. But we hold on to these memories for as long as we can, and I think that’s something uniquely and beautifully human. I believe that’s what anniversaries are for, too—an invitation to remember a person, an event, a significant day years past that still holds weight in our hearts and minds.
October 4 is Dad’s 27th death anniversary, and to all those who know him, love him, and celebrate his life, I invite you to remember. Fret not about the time that has passed or the moments forgotten. Our hearts will fill in whatever our memories or photographs cannot.
