If I Could Turn Back Time

This post was put off for two years, but it always felt too soon, and I haven't had the words until now.

My friends, this has nothing to do with me directly, but it still affects me years later.

Anyone who has been in the photo industry for any good length of time has tragically lost client friends to illness, car accidents, natural disasters, cancer, and the list goes on.

A few years back, when I chose Patty's family as a winner of my "tell me why your family is not boring" contest, her son, Colyn, had a service dog named Fina, and she stole my heart immediately. I wanted to honor their original session and their story about a fifteen-year-old boy with freckles, mitochondrial disorder, and the most beautiful black retriever.

After a few attempts of trying to get the family on the calendar, the holidays had come and gone. I called to pester Patty one last time to get her session on the calendar. The phone rang, and she answered, "hello?" I started to talk, but after a few words, my words stopped, and the silence was deafening.

There was a lot of information in that single word. I had no reason to believe Colyn was gone. He was not terminally ill. It was certainly an experience I had not encountered in my business before, and it changed my outlook on the actual value and importance of what we do as photographers for other people.

I was devastated for a family that I didn't know and for a sweet boy that I would never get to meet.

Over the years, Patty and I have become quite good friends through Facebook, and recently she was nice enough to share her perspective below…

I was so excited to enter the contest the Amy posted in her blog in July. I had been wanting to have photos taken of our youngest son and his service dog, Fina. He had her less than a year and she was already his best friend. I knew I needed to document the love that was growing between them in some way. Honestly, I had scheduled an appointment at our local WalMart only to be given grief about bringing the dog with us even though she was a service dog. It was ok though because I wanted something much more than what WalMart could offer. So, I wrote up Colyn's story, included a few snapshots I had taken, dropped a video I had made and sent it off to Amy with my fingers and toes crossed! It felt like an eternity until it was announced on August 10 that we had won a session! Even Colyn was excited, not about getting his picture taken, but having his picture taken with his girl, yes, she truly was his best friend.

We were busy planning a big vacation to Alaska so we decided we would schedule the photo shoot for when we got back. Our son got sick during the last days of our vacation and was admitted to the hospital as soon as we returned home. The admission lasted 2 weeks. We celebrated his 15th birthday when he came home! It took him weeks to really recover and get some energy back. I knew we could finally schedule the photo shoot as soon as the craziness of the holidays were over.

January 12 everything changed again. Colyn became so sick again and this time never recovered. Instead of scheduling a photo shoot, we found ourselves sorting through the photos we had of our precious son, longing for just one more. We realized that even though we had a large file of them on our computers, it just wasn't enough. If we had just taken the time before our vacation and had those pictures taken. We also found that we didn't have any recent pictures of Colyn with relatives even though they were with him frequently. Sadly, they didn't like to have their pictures taken. We've learned some hard lessons through this. *You can never have enough pictures.  *Your hair/make up won't matter, what matters is the memories that are captured in the photo. *You may not like to have your picture taken but loved ones might want pictures of you.

When Amy called me a month after Colyn had passed away, it was another loss. It was then I realized I had lost the opportunity for a photo shoot of my son and his best friend because I was too busy packing.  If I could go back and do it all over again.... well, that goes without saying.

I had the pleasure of meeting up with Patty and her family a few weeks ago for their long overdue session. We ventured into Colyn's room for a spell and Fina immediately jumped up on the bed, grabbed one of Colyn's stuffed bears and touched our hearts.

If we could turn back time, we absolutely would.

Schedule the photos.

Your friend,

Amy