The Stories I Don't Have

There's a particular kind of longing that comes from missing something you never really had to begin with.

Grandma Becky

For me, it's the stories and photographs of my great grandmother. She wasn't some distant relative—she helped raise my mom, woven into the fabric of her childhood. And yet almost nothing about her made it down to me.

What I know fits into a few sentences: she was from an American Indian nation. She was very kind.

That's it.

No stories about what made her laugh, how she cooked, or the sound of her voice. The only photos I have are screenshots from Ancestry.com. Not the soft, bent prints you find tucked in old envelopes—just digital copies of copies, without context or names or dates.

More than anything, I wish I had one image of her being gentle with my mom — my mom small, leaning in, my great grandmother's hands doing what hands do when they love someone. She was there. She mattered.

It's a strange grief, missing someone you never met. I would give anything to sit with someone who knew her and just listen.

I think about how easily we assume there will always be more time. The family dinner we'll finally sit down for. The stories we mean to record. The photographs we keep saying we'll get around to making. And then one day, there isn't.

That's why I'm a portrait photographer. Because making a portrait does something nothing else can — it stops time. It says: this is who we are to each other, right now, in this season of our lives.

Someday, someone I'll never meet may wish they'd known me. I want to make sure they have more than screenshots to go on.