Unexpected Feelings

On July 6th as I was driving home from Hilton Head...where my mother lives...my 13 week old Saint Bernard puppy fell asleep in the car and died. It was unexpected and heartbreaking. The foreshadowing though looking back was undoubtable.

On July 3rd one of my best friends called me to let me know that her great grandmother died and like half of her family was not going to be at the party. I of course was photographing the wedding and she needed some advice on what to do and how she should handle it. The funeral was on her wedding and she felt that her family, her uncles, had done it on purpose. Well honestly they had. There was nothing stopping them from having the funeral on Monday. There particular people were not invited to the wedding and this was an apparent attack on her day.

Her grandfather, whom she was very close to, was placed in a tough situation. Go to his mothers funeral in West Virgina or attend his granddaughters wedding. He attended the funeral in the morning and drove 9 hours in the rain to the wedding.

This foreshadowing was stunning though, because while the rest of her family was attending the wake my Sydney was unable to wake up from a sleep. We were crushed and stunned because despite Sydney's age she was already stuck in our hearts. Of course when my friend the bride called me on the way home moments after Sydney died it slipped that she had died. After all I could not hide the crying.

After a sleepless night, we went to work at her wedding. Pasting smiles on our faces and crying our eyes out during the ceremony. People must have thought that we were crazy. I know no one knew. I bet they wondered how we ever made it through a wedding at the rate that I was crying.

The lesson here though was one for me. I have never been forced to choose between a death in the family and having to photograph a wedding. I have flown on a minutes notice to help out another photographer who had a heart attack. Somehow you do what you have to do though to live up to your clients expectations and more.