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Capturing our Stories

Posted on: January 19, 2014 | Posted by: Sarah Treanor and Mike Welker

http://widowsvoice.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/14_32684_015_14631.jpgToday I read a beautiful article that really got me thinking. During a commercial photo shoot for a show on the Oprah Network – near the end of the shoot – one of the actors requested the photographer to take a few more shots for him. As he stepped back onto the backdrop, the actor began to sob. The photographer captured about a dozen or so shots before finally feeling uncomfortable with remaining uninvolved and then walked around the camera to give the man a hug. The actor went on to tell him that his father had died that day, and he had just gotten the phone call while on their lunch break during the shoot. He had been holding it in all day – without anyone knowing – and finally, at the end of the day, he just wanted someone to record what he was going through. The images are beautiful… I have shared one below.

As a photographer, and as a human being, this story touched my heart and really got me thinking. I have taken many many self portraits since Drew died… and the vast majority of them seem to end up being on my phone while at the cemetery (including the two below). I don’t know why I do this, but nearly every time I am there, in the quiet space where his body lay, far out in the countryside, I seem compelled to get out the camera and look back in at myself. I want to see myself going through it. I want to capture it – all of it – the pain, the tears, the anguish. I want to have a conversation with myself and explore it from a different point, from a point where I am suddenly outside looking in on that moment. I don’t know why, but I want that. I’m guessing a lot of us for one reason or another want to capture the pain in some way. After all, even pain is sacred… especially sacred.

http://widowsvoice.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/SarahTreanorportrait_cry.jpgThe other thing it made me think about was the fact that I have just one photo of myself from the week that Drew died that captures the essence of that time for me. Only one. For someone who takes thousands of pictures a year and whose very nature is to record everything visually, this feels horrifying. I had no thought then to take photos of myself or to have anyone else do it. I had no thought at all. And yet how I wish – in some strange way – that I had a photo of myself and my two girlfriends enclosing me in their arms on my bedroom floor in the hours after I got the news that he died. I wish there was a photo of the moment I burst into tears in front of his open casket near the end of the viewing… when I clasped my hand tightly over my mouth to keep from screaming. In that moment – in that photo – you would see my older brother jumping up from his seat to rush by my side. My brother, who had not seen me cry since our mom died when I was nine years old, whom I have called countless times since Drew died now, in tears, and been made to laugh and feel loved by the end of our phone call. Or the moment I stood in front of a church full of people and spoke with complete tact and strength and grace about the man that I will love forever.http://widowsvoice.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/SarahTreanorportrait_writing.jpg

How I wish there were photos of all of those moments. And I don’t even know why. I suppose because it would prove that it was real. Because it all feels too awful to be real. Or maybe just to be able to look back more literally, and see from where I am now, where I was in those first days. To see it from a different place. To see with these eyes what I have lived through.

But I do have that one photo of me from the week he died. It’s not one that I took of myself. It is not even a photo I was aware was being taken. It was he and I, in the very last moments of closeness our bodies would ever have. It is a photo that I cherish because it tells such an important part of my story. Decades from now, when someone wants to know how I became who I am – it is this picture that I will show. It shows the death of both of us… and it shows the tender beginning moments of the woman that I would go on to become… that I am becoming day by day.

Whenever I lose sight of everything I’ve been through or begin to be too hard on myself for not being stronger or doing better… this is the photo that puts everything back into perspective for me and reminds me of exactly the woman I am dealing with, and to be gentle with her heart… for she has endured enough and needs only and absolutely love – now and forevermore. 

 

http://widowsvoice.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/SarahTreanor_Portrait_Funeral.jpg

The source of the article and photo referenced in this post can be found here – via Jeremy Cowart. Thank you Jeremy. All other photos are my own.

Categories: Widowed, Widowed & Unmarried, Widowed and Healing

Sarah Treanor and Mike Welker

About Sarah Treanor and Mike Welker

Mike and Sarah are both widowed and are now in a new relationship together sharing about their experiences of living on with grief and new love.

Mike lost his wife Megan in 2014 due to complications from Cystic Fibrosis. Together they had a daughter, Shelby, whom you will hear of often from Mike and Sarah as she embarks on her teen years.

In contrast to the lifelong illness they dealt with, Sarah lost her fiance Drew suddenly in 2012. He was a helicopter pilot and died in a crash while working a contract job across the country.

What you'll read from Mike and Sarah will be both experiences from their current life and love as well as the past... "To us, it is all one big story, and one big family. Now being over 5 years since we lost our partners, the fresher wounds are healed, but there are still fears, triggers, sadness... and there is of course still profound love. Love for the two people who brought us together and for each other. With their love surrounding us, we continue living, learning, and loving on."

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