Sepia photos and dusty memories

When I think of sepia coloured photos I think of names like Aunty Muriel or Great Grandpa Joe, or perhaps little Bobby who died suddenly as a child, staring enigmatically out from ornate and antiquated frames in sad and silent houses. These were photos which as a child I found slightly alarming, eliciting unnaturally hushed and anxious admonitions from adults to ‘not mention that photo because it will make [so-and-so] cry’. Were these photo people ever like us—walked, talked, laughed—or were they always surrounded by an unpleasant and frightening sense of mystery? Did the flavour of dying and death always define who they were?

One of the photos of Ben that we have repeated in various places around the house is a photo that is, I think, becoming one of those spotty old photos—sepia effect and taken when he had lost his hair and his face was thin. Sure the Ben smile is there but he somehow conveys that sense of ‘I don’t belong in your world’ and potentially leaves the lingering image of a bloke with cancer. And we know he never wanted to be thought of as ‘sick’ let alone ‘cancerous’.

We just can’t leave Ben like that. It is so untrue of his bounce and energy and full-on engagement with life. A benign smile in an insipid sepia photo is simply not representative of how he lived his 23 years!

So we’re working on downloading and framing some photos to put around the house which will give people who never knew him (and children of his brothers in the future maybe) a glimpse of the healthy Ben—unafraid, intrepid, not a cloud of cancer on the horizon.

For those of us who did know him it will be fun to have photographic reminders of his unquenchable spirit and physical strength. RIP is still not something that gels with the Ben he was—and surely still is.

By the way: If anyone has any photos, digital or otherwise, please do send them to us. We’d love to see any photo of him at this stage, nearly four long years since he left—it doesn’t even matter if it’s an awful shot of him.

Lindy