In the months following Kalei’s death, I sorted through every photograph and DVD (the digital era was just getting started and new technology was still expensive) I owned. Picture after picture, I separated the ones that included her from the ones that did not. Anything taken prior to January 23, 1985 was deemed unimportant and discarded. 

I thought I threw out pretty much every image that documented my life prior to her birth, but for reasons I can only guess at now, a few stragglers managed to survive the purge.

I am not sure why I kept this one…maybe because it was so close to my birth there was no guilty I am alive while Kalei is not thoughts associated with it.  

This one, (me in the middle (LOL) and my championship steer Clyde on the left), was stuck behind a Kalei one so it survived. 

To this day I don’t know why my grief demanded I eliminate visual depictions of time prior to Kalei’s death. Maybe it was looking at pictures where I was having fun, graduating and getting married seemed memory unfair when she could never have those gifts. Whatever the reason, the pictures above, and a couple more I will share in a later blog, are all I have left from my youth and early adult life. 

Do I regret throwing those photo’s out now? Yes, yes I do! But back then my grief mind, instantaneous and reactive, was in charge of those kinds of thoughts and decisions. Now that all being said, I do have other family members who have a photographic history of our lives growing up so there is some documentation should I ever want it. 

Another interesting grief driven change related to image was not allowing anyone to take any new post-Kalei death picture of me. My thinking was…if Kalei couldn’t have her image preserved in time then I was darned if I would let mine be either! Again, there was this feeling that to do otherwise was somehow being selfish or unfair to my child. 

To appreciate the significance of this particular grief aspect, you might want to read Chapter 22 in my book. You will just have to trust me when I say, “If you want a grieving parent to have their photograph taken, put a picture of their child in their arms…it hurts a little bit less and you might have half a chance at actually getting them to agree to participate.”

That being said, a few images of me from A Lifetime I Could Not Imagine were captured. How did that happen? On some days, I just did not have the strength to fight that particular no you can’t take my photo battle so I just sucked it up and let it happen, and dealt with the feelings of betrayal later.

While I still feel twinges of guilt when I look at picture of me taken after Kalei’s death, I have learned how to accommodate this very human need to visually document our lives. While Kalei’s life is over (and by default no more pictures of her can be taken), mine is not. Short of becoming invisible or hiding out in the wilderness for the rest of my life, my image is going to be captured every now and then, whether I like it or not. Learning how to graciously accommodate, and yes, even invite those occurrences when deemed important enough, is just another grief lesson I had to learn.