The Last Photo
It’s very hard for most of us to really dive into the present and accept where we are right now.
Oh, maybe we want something more, better, newer, WARMER. (For those of you experiencing a blizzard!) More fun, more action, more youth, more more.
I put up this photo that my friend Janet took a few months before she died. She sent it to me and wrote, “Just enjoying each day and trying to stay serene and grateful for all that I’ve had in life.”
None of us knows when our last day on earth will be. But we do know that we’re all going to reach that exit door and have to walk out through it.
So let’s make the most of today. It’s all we have. It’s our own; it’s what we make of it. And it’s not going to last forever. Let’s try not to wait until our final hours to really live the lives we have been given. Let’s try to really feel grateful and present in our lives.
Tool For Tuesday: What if this is the last photo you take? What would you do differently?
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About dianabletter
Diana Bletter is the author of several books, including The Invisible Thread: A Portrait of Jewish American Women (with photographs by Lori Grinker), shortlisted for a National Jewish Book Award. Her novel, A Remarkable Kindness, (HarperCollins) was published in 2015. She is the First Prize Winner of Moment Magazine's 2019 Fiction Contest. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Commentary, tabletmag, Glamour, The Forward, The North American Review, Times of Israel, and is a reporter for Israel21C, and many other publications. She is author of Big Up Yourself: It's About Time You Like Being You and The Mom Who Took off On Her Motorcycle, a memoir of her 10,000-mile motorcycle trip to Alaska and back to New York. She lives in a small beach village in Western Galilee, Israel, with her husband and family. She is a member of the local hevra kadisha, the burial circle, and a Muslim-Jewish-Christian-Druze women's group in the nearby town of Akko. And, she likes snowboarding and climbing trees.
DIANA BLETTER 
Good way to start my day. Thank you.
Such a good reminder, Diana. It reminded me of a picture snapped at the last minute of a group of us on the day the four of us separated for college. Two of us were driving away that day, one was moving into an apartment to attend the local community college, and the third was recently married and had just learned she was pregnant, so she was finishing a summer school class and then would wait until after the baby was born.
The picture is of four young women, arms wrapped around each other’s shoulders as we laugh or smile into the camera. It was a day of separation but also possibilities.
The next time we all were photographed together was more than a year later, at a funeral. One of the friends who went away to college was called home when her parents were killed by a drunk driver, and her younger brother had been seriously injured. In this picture of us together, we clutch hands, and a whole new awareness is apparent on our faces.
Every day is a blessing, moments in time to treasure and embrace.
Thank you, Marylin, for that vivid story of photos taken and what happened the following year. This sounds also like a story for you to write about!