This is the last picture I took of Scout, about five or six hours before she died. I realized I didn’t have a picture of the two of us, so I took a quick series of pictures. I didn’t set the camera up all that well, I was too upset to focus on photography, but nevertheless I’m thankful for the pictures. I need to learn how to fix a few things in post-processing, like the excessive yellow in parts of my face that came from the room lighting instead of the flash.
I didn’t take many pictures since as you can see from her expression she was already on the decline and I didn’t want to stress her, so I soon put the camera away and snuggled with her instead. Although even when healthy I would see this face when she thought I had taken enough pictures, she wasn’t that fond of the camera. But in this case she was more ill than annoyed.
It’s easy after her death to feel guilty that I didn’t photograph her more in the last years of her life. And especially that I didn’t photograph the two of us together. To regret all the shots I didn’t take but should have. Or that over the years I didn’t upgrade cameras often enough so that many of my early pictures are at a low resolution, even on today’s monitors, and many from her middle years will be low in the era of retina displays. Or that I never learned to shoot video and don’t have good video — and especially audio — of her purring while curled up in her warm bed.
Some of that self-criticism is fair, and something I need to learn from. But some of it springs from the grief of losing her, when the sorrow subsides it will be easier to remember she benefitted more from me spending time with her than always trying for the perfect picture.
I certainly took a lot of pictures of her. It just hurts that I can’t take any more.
Boolie 