The Family Documentarian

Fifteen years ago today, my little family of four boarded a flight from Los Angeles to San Francisco (where we left behind an expensive personalized water bottle), then caught a second flight from San Francisco to Hong Kong before taking an hour-long ferry ride to our new home in Macau. If you’d asked me back then if we’d be gone for fifteen years, I would have laughed and said no way. And yet, here we are, my little family down to just three and still living abroad.

In early 2011 Michael had been hired as the technical director of a new show in Macau, leaving on just a week’s notice. The boys and I stayed behind in Los Angeles to finish out the school year and pack, sell, or discard all our belongings. Michael flew back to collect us early in the morning on Benjamin’s 8th birthday, and we forced him to endure an entire day at Disneyland running on fumes and sheer will to celebrate.

We sold both our cars within an hour of listing them, and offloaded all our furniture except for a few sentimental pieces which went into storage. The original plan was to live abroad for 3-5 years, so we saved items that were either irreplaceable or the biggest ticket items which would cost more to replace than simply storing them for up to five years. (A friend in Macau would later give me a small ceramic sign, with the sentiment We plan, God laughs hand-painted on it. A recurring theme of ours clearly — I’ve been paying for that small storage unit for 15 year now!)

We had a big farewell bash on our last full day in America at a nearby park. Family and friends stopped by to say goodbye and give us hugs. I made sure to take a ton of photos, especially since we were moving the kids abroad again at the tender ages of 8 and 10 and wanted a reference to continually remind them of who these important people were as time passed. I have long been the one at every family gathering to snap a group photo, creating a record of life through the years. People used to groan, but I never let up on my mission to document every gathering with everyone together. Thankfully I now have a substantial collection of wonderful memories in photographic form.

On the day of our farewell, I snapped a lot of smaller group photos, but one of Michael’s friends who is a professional photographer gathered everyone who was still there at the end of the day and snapped the photo above. I was so grateful to have it when just a few months later my favorite uncle passed away. He was the first person of my parents’ generation to pass away in the Rose family, and it hit me so hard. I used all our air miles and flew back to America on my own to be with my cousins and aunt to grieve as a family this first loss in the generation above me. Having the photo with him in it helped me remember the last time I’d been with him, our conversation, the sound of his voice. I have it printed in a frame and every time I’ve looked at it over the years, I would think this is the last time I saw him, the last time we were together, and I have a beautiful record of that day.

It showed up this week in my Google Photos “on this day” album, and I took a moment to really look at the photo again. I was gutted to realize just how many other people in this photo are no longer with us. I counted six people, young and old, among the family and friends who passed away since it was taken fifteen years ago. Among the people who were there that day but left before the photo was taken, there are two others who have also died. All I can think is how much I wish we’d taken this photo just a little earlier in the day so we could have captured them as well.

The crematorium where we had a very small, private gathering to say goodbye to Michael is quite far away from all public transit.

The intimate group of friends who joined us that day arrived by taxi or private car for the short twenty minute ceremony. It was mid-day, three days before Christmas, so we were not having a reception or other gathering following the brief service as everyone had places to be during the busiest time of year. When it was over, we all had to call a taxi to leave, and there were several minutes where we were just standing awkwardly in the parking lot. I was a bit shell shocked from what we had gone through that day, and when our pastor asked if there was anything else I wanted to say or do while all together, I realized that though it was very unconventional, I wanted to take a group photo of everyone who was there supporting us.

As our pastor pulled everyone together, I explained that from my personal experience, the only thing worse than being born at Christmas is dying at Christmas, especially when you live abroad. No one in my entire family except Michael, myself, and our sons were able to travel to Virginia for my Mama’s funeral at Christmas, and here we were once again having a funeral six years later for my husband on the same day. The small group joining us were not there just for us or for themselves, they were standing in for Michael’s parents, my Dad and his wife, our siblings and aunts and uncles and cousins and dearest friends. I wanted to share the image privately with Michael’s heartbroken sisters, to say to them look, we were not alone, we were surrounded by people who love Michael, who love us, who love you who they have not yet met. To look back on it myself and see the faces of the beautiful humans who held us tightly on the darkest of days. I won’t be framing it, but I’m so glad to have it as a reminder that we are not alone.

For Michael’s public memorial, we had thousands of photos to choose from to paint a full picture of a beautiful life well lived. It is a gift to my present and future selves from my past shutterbug self to have so many great shots to look at — posed and candid, imperfect and beautiful. Yesterday I was looking for a photo from October of 2024, right before we left on our big European Christmas Market Adventure, and it hit me once again that all the photos I will ever take with my Beloved have already been taken.

Michael will never age beyond 54 but one day down the road, I likely will. He and I will not be growing old together, it will just be me. What a strange and terrible place to find myself. And I suppose for anyone else in the photo above who perhaps forgot about that specific day fifteen years ago and sees their own precious loved one in the group, still young and healthy but now no longer with us. Once again I’m so grateful for that photo, of the existence of all those people, of their place in our life at that time. May it inspire those of you reading this to be like me, the annoying family documentarian who grabs somebody at the restaurant or the park to hand off the phone to or sets up a make-shift tripod and uses the self-timer and says, Hey everyone, before we leave… let’s just grab a quick photo!

In my personal experience, it is always worth it.

More soon.