The Last Family Photo
Grieving the family I lost and the family I never had
In our last family photo, we’re all smiling, of course. Well, maybe I shouldn’t say “of course.” There are plenty of family photos in which at least one child is pouting, grimacing, or actively crying.
The photo was taken at the Continental Divide, in the Rocky Mountains, in the same place my husband and I had posed 13 years prior. Back then, his dreadlocks were only an inch long, not even yet fully locked. I proceeded to twist them each week for 13 years and then some. I twisted them through two pregnancies, two births, multiple jobs, and one cross-country move.
Our last family photo doesn’t depict the last family vacation we took, but it does depict the last time we got it together to pose, the four of us, in front of a camera. Our last family vacation would take place nine months later, in March 2024, when I booked us an AirBnb near the Oregon Coast. During that so-called “vacation,” I spent a good bit of time wandering alone up and down the beach, crying into the whipping wind.
We all look so happy in our last family photo, so confident in our happiness, standing with our arms around one another at the Continental Divide. It’s hard even for me, one of the people prominently featured in the photo, to tell that the happiness was a lie. Or…
