Photograph

I'm not sure why but we have been taking pictures of Mom. I don't know many people who like the pictures they take when conscious so I'm not sure why we are taking pictures of her in a state we certainly don't want to reminisce. If things go well, she will not want to see them either. A part of me thinks my father will whip out the pictures to make emphatic points during the conversation he hopes to have with her about retirement. I hope he doesn't, I can't see that going anywhere good. I took it one step further today. I have my actual camera here and I snapped a guilty picture (or three). My dad has sent some on to relatives who want to see and I've considered whether my close friends want to see. I think we take these pictures for the same reason people record the tornadoes and tsunamis heading straight for them. To memorialize, to make permanent witness to the trauma our minds will numb for us as time marches on.

There is a passage in the short story, How Beautiful With Shoes, I won't do it justice, but it says danger met and averted was never really dangerous at all. Essentially, it couldn't have been that bad if you survived. I know intellectually that isn't true. This is bad. Inching back from a fatal drop is not nothing. Still being in ICU is not nothing. Respirator is not nothing. But I see her wrinkle her sedated head when they move her around and I see her try to move her hands and feet which are restrained so she doesn't dislodge all the lines tethering her to this realm and I feel like she's going to make it. I feel like I will get to ask her if she heard me, if she remembers her silent coughs when her gag reflex was triggered by the tube down her throat when they changed her position. Ashley says she won't. Last time she was sedated she apparently didn't remember anything but this is also a woman who doesn't remember the things you tell her when she's awake. I hope she doesn't remember because we've said a lot of random-ass things just to fill the room with words. Mostly I hope she doesn't remember because she is cold and has a tube down her throat and nose and other things in her chest, neck, and hands. I'm cold in here and I'm healthy. I guess that's why I took the pictures. When I'm tempted to minimize the danger because it was survived, I'll have the photographs.