Tybee Island, GA, 2002

An anonymous couple walking into a blurred nexus of land, sea, and sky could easily be a visual metaphor for a variety of concepts. It could be the first, or last, image in a story-telling series, illustrating the beginning, or ending, of a grand adventure.

I went to a funeral last Saturday. I did not know the young woman, taken much too early; her parents are friends of mine, so I went for them. I did not know her, but a real display of how far and wide she reached positively into other lives was the overflowing parking lot at the funeral home, and the standing room only aspect of not only the chapel, but the lobby as well.

I don’t know when it became a practice to show or display a variety of candid photographs of the deceased at funerals, but I think maybe the 90’s or aughts. The funerals I have attended were for people I knew, so the photos would have been familiar; I took less notice. This time, as I stood in line to speak to the family, and throughout the service, I watched a repeating series of those life-span photographs of a person I never knew, and it hit me all over again, the power of photography. I learned much about this stranger: she liked travel, and horses, and boats, she had close friends, she was funny and had a sense of humor. She was dearly loved.

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