The Year Without Pictures

1994 was the year without pictures.

I have been obsessed with taking pictures of all of my adult life, and I never took a single picture during Mama's Cancer Year.

January started with me getting terribly sick on my 29th Birthday.  I remember being sprawled out on the couch with the longest bout of stomach flu on my birthday.  We did not celebrate that year, but Mama stopped by the couch and asked if I wanted to still have my picture taken.  

I told her, "No," but 17 years later I really wish I would have said "Yes."

Less than two months later, she was officially diagnosed with Stage 4 Lung Cancer.

Her treatments began three weeks later, and her beautiful, thick, wavy hair began falling out after the second round.

For a woman so brave enough to have her eldest daughter shave her head ~ shortly after the horrifying tears that came with clumps of her hair falling out after her shower ~ then pulling off her turban excitedly to show her grandsons that everything would be okay to be around a bald grandma ~ making them giggle ~ to a woman so privately modest that I instinctively knew never to take her picture with her turban, scarf, or bald head showing.

Mom never left home without full make-up ~ gorgeous blue eyes with long Maybelline coated eyelashes ~ frosted Softshell Pink lipstick ~ in case she ever bumped into Robert Redford, she would say.

And so, we did not take any pictures that Easter, Mother's Day, Father's Day, birthdays, and ball games in between.

Later, I looked at an old video she managed to take of the boys' little league games in May and saw Mama's reflection behind the camera in a car window perhaps, and I could see a peek of the pre-made scarves we bought in San Jose during the special trip we made to look for a wig.  The wigs were stiff and fake, and Mama could not imagine herself ever wearing one ~ but we spent a tearful afternoon trying them on ~ with Rhonda and Dad by our sides ~ and instead found all these sweet and pure little country-type scarves ~ all pre-tied in the back ~ in bright Easter Egg colors that we would wash every week for her.

There were times when I wanted to take her picture, but I memorized every one of our "Lasts" instead.  For a family that chronicled every event of our lives on film ~ with photo albums stuffed in our bookshelves ~ The Year Without Pictures is one to remember ~ even without a photo album dated 1994.

Later, I remembered that my brave brother had indeed taken one picture ~ the very last picture of Mom with her spunky 83-year-old Mother, Our Beloved Nanny.  And so Randy captured the essence of who she was before cancer stripped us of our memory of what she looked like ~

She, Dad, and Her Precious Youngest Child ~ Her Only Son ~ went to visit Nanny three days after diagnosis ~ March 12, 1994.  He had the courage to get behind the lens and take that last photo in Mama's hometown of Rio Linda in Nan's country home ~ just one block down the road from the Old Chicken Ranch:  

Mom is brave and happy ~ despite the unknown that lay ahead ~

But I see the tears in Nanny's smile as she clung to the daughter who would soon say goodbye.

Mama and Nanny

The Last Picture Taken

March 12, 1994