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His name is Jeff and I meet him at the hospice where I volunteer. Where I am simply there to listen — a ghost, essentially, taking in the stories of those who would inevitably lose their fight against death — Jeff is the resident photographer.
The first time we meet, he is sporting a blue tie, purple dress shirt, and a DSLR camera. I find his gaudy clothing somewhat jarring for this place, and I ask him what the camera is for. This is his response:
“I take pictures of the living dead – and I ask them to smile.”
Every week, Jeff comes in and talks to the residents of the hospice, one by one, asking them how their days are going and if their family has come to see them recently; he spends extra time with those who haven’t had visitors. He takes special note of two groups: those that have just come in, and those that are about to go. For those that have recently been admitted, their first meeting is a trust-building session, where he tells them that he is a photographer and asks about their lives, sharing his own in the process. This sharing is something that most of regular staff steadfastly avoids, to minimize connecting to those who are about to pass away, but for Jeff, it’s a part of what he does. He knows the endings of the stories already, and he’s heard enough beginnings by now that they have started to run together, but it still affects him. From his swollen red eyes to the wet patches on his sleeves after these sessions, I know that he still cries for them.
For those that are about to take their final bows, Jeff has another request: a picture of them. Not a casual picture, shot and forgotten by disposable camera, but instead a full-fledged production. He explains to each patient that the set up for the shoot involves a make-up artist, multiple lightstands, and can take up to an hour… an hour of precious time, when time is rarest of all valuables at this stage in life. As if that weren’t enough, though, Jeff drops the bomb: for this picture, they can’t be on any of their medication — a sacrifice beyond belief, one no one else would ever ask of them.
Some turn him down right away. Their initial reactions, of course, are incredulous. Why invite the pain back in? Why remind themselves of their own decrepit form? Who would even want to look at such a picture? Some understand the request — for those that don’t, Jeff stays with them, explaining for as long as it takes why they should do this final photo shoot.
In the end, it isn’t for themselves, who have little left, but for those that they’re leaving behind. For their children and grandchildren, friends and family, the picture is a lasting reminder that they were alive and strong up to the end, that they did not go into the night with head bowed low, drugged into oblivion. Others’ pictures are displayed on the mantle of the hospice’s fireplace, a reminder to those that come after that they are not alone in their struggles.
-
This photo shoot was the last day of Susan’s life. She was made up just enough to ease time’s wounds, but not so far as to try and hide her life experiences; you could still see the laugh lines of a happy life, though she hasn’t been using them lately. The lighting was set up, far gentler than the bright lights of a modeling studio, to accommodate her sensitive eyes. Jeff asks her to smile, and the shoot begins.
Sometimes, those that sit down for him have made their peace with those on Earth (and otherwise), and after a few minutes of pleasant chatter, offer a graceful smile. They are calm, at ease, and sit with a dignity befitting kings and queens.
For others, the road is far more difficult. When Jeff asks the brave men and women that sit for him to smile, he insists that it is a real smile. He knows that it’s difficult, that they’re hurting, and that sometimes it’s simply an effort to keep their eyes open, to not cry out as the pain ravages their body; he knows that they’re scared, but he won’t take a picture until he knows that the smile is genuine .
Susan was one of those people. She was eighty years old and dying of cancer; she had beaten it once before, but when God rolled the dice again on her, forty years later, they came up snake eyes. When Jeff had first talked to her, she had agreed to sit for a portrait for her son and daughter, who had been visiting every day in the week that she had been released to hospice care. But after she put on that first fake smile, trembling from the pain, things had gone downhill and she was ready to leave, the most miserable she had ever been.
“This was a waste of time, and you don’t know what it feels like to be in my position, and I’m going to go back to my room and use my remaining time to…to…”
He never stops them if they insist on leaving, but instead tells them a story about the worst time of his life. Sometimes it’s about his parents as they approached the twilight of their lives, other times it’s about his own trials – the miscarriage his wife had, the times he had to dumpster-dive to feed his children. He asks them questions about what they would have done; he offers candid and truthful responses to their own philosophical issues, and bit by bit, he connects with them, until, at some point, he’ll see an opening in something he talks about. Maybe it reminds them about a pet they had, or a sport they played, or a loved one…and he’ll say, ‘do you regret those times?’
For Susan, Jeff’s breakthrough was in telling a story about the first fight that he and his wife ever had. He caught the wistful sigh at the end, when he told her of the single red rose he had left on her windshield the next morning as an apology, and asked her about the best date that her husband had ever taken her on. She started describing the Ferris wheel, what the lights of the county fair had looked below them… And he asks, “Did you regret those times?”
She says, "No…" and smiles lightly, happy memories beating away the pain, and he waits for just a moment before clicking the shutter. Sometimes the smile wavers and disappears before he gets the shot… and then he starts on a different track, determined to find it again.
The act of smiling doesn’t change anything for her, or any of the others. It doesn’t make their disease or their death less easy to deal with, it doesn’t make them stronger people because there will be an eight by ten photograph of them with a smile on their face. They do not gain an extension on life or a magic understanding of the state of their soul.
But for many, it brings them closer to acceptance, because it shows them — and us — that there is always a meaningful choice in fighting to the end. They show a hidden inner strength when they declare with their actions that there is more to life than simply mitigating pain, even in the closing acts of their life. In Jeff’s work, Susan and others experience, for one small moment at the end of all things, the happiness that we all strive for from the moment we are born, and are immortalized with that happiness upon their face.
Their stories and their smiles are their last gift to us, the living.
The first time we meet, he is sporting a blue tie, purple dress shirt, and a DSLR camera. I find his gaudy clothing somewhat jarring for this place, and I ask him what the camera is for. This is his response:
“I take pictures of the living dead – and I ask them to smile.”
Every week, Jeff comes in and talks to the residents of the hospice, one by one, asking them how their days are going and if their family has come to see them recently; he spends extra time with those who haven’t had visitors. He takes special note of two groups: those that have just come in, and those that are about to go. For those that have recently been admitted, their first meeting is a trust-building session, where he tells them that he is a photographer and asks about their lives, sharing his own in the process. This sharing is something that most of regular staff steadfastly avoids, to minimize connecting to those who are about to pass away, but for Jeff, it’s a part of what he does. He knows the endings of the stories already, and he’s heard enough beginnings by now that they have started to run together, but it still affects him. From his swollen red eyes to the wet patches on his sleeves after these sessions, I know that he still cries for them.
For those that are about to take their final bows, Jeff has another request: a picture of them. Not a casual picture, shot and forgotten by disposable camera, but instead a full-fledged production. He explains to each patient that the set up for the shoot involves a make-up artist, multiple lightstands, and can take up to an hour… an hour of precious time, when time is rarest of all valuables at this stage in life. As if that weren’t enough, though, Jeff drops the bomb: for this picture, they can’t be on any of their medication — a sacrifice beyond belief, one no one else would ever ask of them.
Some turn him down right away. Their initial reactions, of course, are incredulous. Why invite the pain back in? Why remind themselves of their own decrepit form? Who would even want to look at such a picture? Some understand the request — for those that don’t, Jeff stays with them, explaining for as long as it takes why they should do this final photo shoot.
In the end, it isn’t for themselves, who have little left, but for those that they’re leaving behind. For their children and grandchildren, friends and family, the picture is a lasting reminder that they were alive and strong up to the end, that they did not go into the night with head bowed low, drugged into oblivion. Others’ pictures are displayed on the mantle of the hospice’s fireplace, a reminder to those that come after that they are not alone in their struggles.
-
This photo shoot was the last day of Susan’s life. She was made up just enough to ease time’s wounds, but not so far as to try and hide her life experiences; you could still see the laugh lines of a happy life, though she hasn’t been using them lately. The lighting was set up, far gentler than the bright lights of a modeling studio, to accommodate her sensitive eyes. Jeff asks her to smile, and the shoot begins.
Sometimes, those that sit down for him have made their peace with those on Earth (and otherwise), and after a few minutes of pleasant chatter, offer a graceful smile. They are calm, at ease, and sit with a dignity befitting kings and queens.
For others, the road is far more difficult. When Jeff asks the brave men and women that sit for him to smile, he insists that it is a real smile. He knows that it’s difficult, that they’re hurting, and that sometimes it’s simply an effort to keep their eyes open, to not cry out as the pain ravages their body; he knows that they’re scared, but he won’t take a picture until he knows that the smile is genuine .
Susan was one of those people. She was eighty years old and dying of cancer; she had beaten it once before, but when God rolled the dice again on her, forty years later, they came up snake eyes. When Jeff had first talked to her, she had agreed to sit for a portrait for her son and daughter, who had been visiting every day in the week that she had been released to hospice care. But after she put on that first fake smile, trembling from the pain, things had gone downhill and she was ready to leave, the most miserable she had ever been.
“This was a waste of time, and you don’t know what it feels like to be in my position, and I’m going to go back to my room and use my remaining time to…to…”
He never stops them if they insist on leaving, but instead tells them a story about the worst time of his life. Sometimes it’s about his parents as they approached the twilight of their lives, other times it’s about his own trials – the miscarriage his wife had, the times he had to dumpster-dive to feed his children. He asks them questions about what they would have done; he offers candid and truthful responses to their own philosophical issues, and bit by bit, he connects with them, until, at some point, he’ll see an opening in something he talks about. Maybe it reminds them about a pet they had, or a sport they played, or a loved one…and he’ll say, ‘do you regret those times?’
For Susan, Jeff’s breakthrough was in telling a story about the first fight that he and his wife ever had. He caught the wistful sigh at the end, when he told her of the single red rose he had left on her windshield the next morning as an apology, and asked her about the best date that her husband had ever taken her on. She started describing the Ferris wheel, what the lights of the county fair had looked below them… And he asks, “Did you regret those times?”
She says, "No…" and smiles lightly, happy memories beating away the pain, and he waits for just a moment before clicking the shutter. Sometimes the smile wavers and disappears before he gets the shot… and then he starts on a different track, determined to find it again.
The act of smiling doesn’t change anything for her, or any of the others. It doesn’t make their disease or their death less easy to deal with, it doesn’t make them stronger people because there will be an eight by ten photograph of them with a smile on their face. They do not gain an extension on life or a magic understanding of the state of their soul.
But for many, it brings them closer to acceptance, because it shows them — and us — that there is always a meaningful choice in fighting to the end. They show a hidden inner strength when they declare with their actions that there is more to life than simply mitigating pain, even in the closing acts of their life. In Jeff’s work, Susan and others experience, for one small moment at the end of all things, the happiness that we all strive for from the moment we are born, and are immortalized with that happiness upon their face.
Their stories and their smiles are their last gift to us, the living.
