Author HR Burkett is back this quarter with another guest post!

A note from Emily: I challenge you to read this piece a few times and reflect on it. If you feel called, Author HR Burkett and I would both love to hear in the comments if a line or two stood out to you in this piece. Thank you to HR Burkett for sharing this with my readers!

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I looked at the photos of what I had created.

The venue looked beautiful. Everyone was smiling and laughing. Everything was in order.

And I hated the way I looked in every picture.

I hated every gray hair. I was ashamed of my body and the way it moved.

I looked tired…and the event hadn’t even started yet.

I scrolled through, an ache in my chest with every new image of myself.

I wanted these images to exist. When my time came, I wanted there to be some kind of evidence that I’d existed.

Some kind of evidence that I’d mattered.

I’d been raised with an appreciation for history and ancestry, and I wanted there to be something for the future to find of me. But then, a sad, unbidden thought popped into my head:

Why would it matter?

I had no children.

I was an ancestral dead end.

A proverbial broken branch.

I sighed.

At least I had my books…the “children” birthed of my imagination.

My books, which I’d conceived of and “raised” before sending them out into the world.

And that was something—wasn’t it?

It eased my mind to know that stories I’d written would live on with others; novels with my name on them.

Something…anything…that would tie me back to this world when my time had come.

So yes, I wanted these pictures to exist—but I had to learn to live alongside them.

I looked again.

And instead of focusing on my gray hairs, I remembered how my mom had brushed that same hair when I was little.

Instead of seeing tired eyes, I noticed how their chocolate brown resembled my dad’s.

And yes, I looked tired because I was tired. But I was tired because I had spent weeks working to make this event a success.

Despite the way I looked or moved, I was there.

I showed up.

And once again, I had created something from nothing.

That thought stopped me.

Because maybe I had been looking for evidence of my existence in all the wrong places.

I had been thinking about legacy as something biological—a line stretching backward through generations and, hopefully, forward through generations still to come.

Mine stopped with me.

There was sadness in that realization, and I wasn’t going to pretend there wasn’t.

But did that make the branch broken?

Maybe a branch doesn’t have to keep growing to have been part of the tree.

Maybe it can simply exist for a while—growing leaves, offering shade, weathering storms, reaching toward the sun—and leave the tree different because it was there.

And maybe I had branches of another kind.

There were books on shelves that had once existed only inside my head.

There were characters walking around in the imaginations of people I might never meet.

There were events that began as ideas and became rooms filled with people talking and laughing.

There were friendships, conversations, memories, kindnesses, mistakes,
accomplishments and ordinary days.

There were people whose lives had intersected with mine.

And there were photographs.

I looked at them again.

The woman in those pictures still had gray hair.

Her body hadn’t changed.

She still looked tired.

I still didn’t particularly like the way she looked in every photograph.

But maybe I didn’t have to.

Because I finally realized that a photograph doesn’t exist to prove that I was beautiful.

It exists to prove that I was there.

I wonder how many of us have accidentally erased ourselves from our own histories because we didn’t like the way we looked.

How many mothers volunteered to take the picture so they wouldn’t have to be in it?

How many grandmothers hid from the camera because they didn’t like their wrinkles?

How many vacations, birthdays, holidays, weddings and ordinary Tuesday afternoons are missing someone because that person thought they were too heavy, too old, too tired or simply not photogenic enough to be part of the evidence?

Someday, those imperfections may be the very things someone treasures.

I would give almost anything for another photograph of my mom.

I wouldn’t care what she weighed.

I wouldn’t count her wrinkles or inspect her gray hairs.

I would look at her face.

I would look at her hands.

I would search for the little things I remembered and the things I had somehow forgotten.

I would simply be grateful that, for one fraction of a second, someone had pointed a camera at her and preserved the evidence that she had been there.

Maybe I owed myself the same grace.

So I’m going to try to stay in the pictures.

Even when I don’t like them.

Even when I’m heavier than I wish I were.

Even when the gray is showing.

Even when I’m tired.

I’m going to let the camera preserve the woman who actually lived my life instead of waiting for some imaginary version of her that I deem worthy of remembering.

Maybe someday someone will find one of those photographs and wonder about me.

Maybe they’ll open one of my books.

Maybe they’ll find my name buried somewhere in an old family tree and wonder about the branch that stopped.

Or maybe they won’t.

I’m beginning to understand that being remembered forever isn’t what gives a life meaning.

I was here.

I loved people.

I was loved.

I wrote stories.

I made things.

I showed up.

I created something from nothing, over and over again.

And somewhere along the way, I left pieces of myself behind.

In books.

In photographs.

In memories.

In people.

Maybe my branch ends with me.

But it was never broken.

It grew.

And I think I’m finally learning to let it be seen.

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HR Burkett is a contemporary romance writer based in Jacksonville, FL
www.authorhrburkett.com
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