Snapshots

Thought this might run in a magazine, but honestly, this is so much better.

Jun 03, 2025

Hi friends! Long time no “see.” I’m sharing an essay today that I actually had originally intended for another space (no offense — still love you all the most!). I had entered it as a submission into an essay contest for a local magazine in my city and, it turns out, I did not win… so! Instead, I’m pivoting and sharing it here! I spent a good amount of time on it — which is, unfortunately, a real rarity for me these days — and it’s about a concept I still think about far more often than you’d imagine, so I didn’t want it to just get chucked into the trash (aka sit on my hard drive til the end of time). Hope you like it.💛

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A couple of months ago, I was at an event my local library listening to an author speak. She shared an anecdote that, in an unexpected flash, made me realize we don’t all recall our memories in the same way. This was something I’d never really thought about before, but since I learned it (and let tell you right now I never actually fact checked this, other than conferring with the friend I’d attended the event with), I haven’t been able to stop reflecting on it in my head.

Some people, I learned, are ‘film’ people, able to play back their entire lives as if captured like an old-school family movie. And then there’s ‘snapshot’ people, like me, who can mainly recall specific moments from their past. Artifacts from another time.

If you’ve ever lost someone you love, then you know that’s when you really wish for a mental movie. Something you could hit ‘play’ on anytime, see your person. We don’t talk about it enough, but grief is a lifelong heartbreak, an excess of love that suddenly has nowhere to go, and when it hits you, you wish you’d written down everything your person had ever told you. Every detail they’d ever shared. Every garbage moment you’d spent together doing nothing. You want to be able to call it all back, in vivid technicolor.

In July 2020, my mom passed away unexpectedly from complications related to cancer treatment. She’d only been diagnosed four months prior, rarely sick with so much as a cold before that point, and it felt like the rug had been ripped out from under me. My mom had always been my fiercest protector and my very best friend, and on a hot summer day in the middle of the summer, she was suddenly and completely gone.

We were Lorelai and Rory, minus the quirky town and narrow age difference. Her only child, my mom and I did everything together when I was growing up. I was also born with a rare blood disorder, and she dedicated herself to both making sure I was both healthy and enjoying as normal of childhood as I could, even despite the frequent medical appointments and hospital visits. I was never much of a rule breaker or risk taker as a child — the result of growing up with a chronic illness, no doubt — but I knew that as long as my mom was with me, everything would be fine. It always was.

There are snapshots forever imprinted into my brain from the weekend I found out she was dying, ones I’m glad I have but that hurt too much to recall. An image of her in her hospital bed, bald from chemo and looking nothing like the mother who’d spent hours in libraries with me, contemplating what books to borrow, or making pancakes as an after-school snack. One of myself the afternoon after she’d passed, sitting outside in my parents’ backyard, unable to speak or do much more than stare blankly at palm trees for hours. I’d taken a shower like a zombie when we’d gotten home from the hospital that day, and thrown the entire outfit I’d been wearing into the trash can in the bathroom. I wanted nothing to do with anything that had a part in stealing my person away from me, including the pink leggings I’d been wearing. In hindsight, I don’t know why I had pulled on something so bright for what I knew would be a dark day, but I can still see myself in my mind’s eye contemplating what to do with them in the aftermath.

Another moment, another snapshot.

Once my mom died, I was lost. I desperately missed the bond we had, and would occasionally write emails to myself that I pretended were reaching her, on whatever grand adventure she was now on. I grew to hate the month of July, transforming it from a month I’d never paid much attention to, a symbol of the fizzy freedom of summertime, to one I wished I could erase clear off a calendar. All 31 days felt cursed, even though she’d passed at the end of the month. I’ve tried to ignore the date, and yet somehow, my body automatically feels it coming. A sort of muscle memory, the grief seeping out of my pores.

Three years later, my husband and I moved to San Diego, and soon after discovered I was pregnant. To say becoming a parent had not been on my bingo card would have been an understatement; I had long assumed motherhood (unless through adoption) would never be a part of my story. From a young age, I had been told by doctors that becoming pregnant would be incredibly difficult — likely impossible — due to my chronic illness. By the time a positive result popped up on a pregnancy test, I’d given up on the idea altogether. I laughed like a maniac at the result sitting on my bathroom counter, shock and joy swirled into one. Another snapshot, filed away.

My doctor pinpointed my due date to the end of June, but of course, babies have their own timelines. Isn’t that what everyone says? They arrive when they want, and, what do you know, my joyful and very stubborn daughter decided to stake her own claim on the month I’d spent the previous couple of years trying to actively avoid. She was born at the very start of July, gifting me a month bookended by my two favorite people in the universe who will never meet, as well as an opportunity to revise the story I’ve been telling myself, both about who I am and who I can be, and about which memories get to define how we move through the world. And this July will be bracketed by that duality of life — the celebration of my daughter’s first birthday and, later, the fifth anniversary of losing my mom. I still have a hard time believing either are real.

And sometimes, as I hold my daughter, I play voicemails I’d saved from my mom. In them, she’s talking about the most mundane of things — asking me if I need eggs at the grocery store, and telling me to call her back. It’s not a film, but perhaps it’s enough for my daughter's own snapshot.

So Many Somethings

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