I’ve taken a little hiatus from working this Spring. March is essentially a blur. The past few months have been focused on my own family and friends. On a Friday afternoon near the end of February, my sister went into cardiac arrest. She’s a loving mother of 4 children, ages 12 to under 1, with no prior health issues and it was completely out of the blue. I spent the next week in Atlanta at my sister’s bedside, hoping and praying that she would survive, and then survive as herself, without brain injury. It’s a long and miraculous tale, one best told through the journal entries posted to a CaringBridge site established for my sister during the melee to keep everyone up-to-date (
http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/tracyslatoncrosson). After two weeks in the hospital, my sister returned home to her beautiful family with the hope of a full recovery. Her family needed quite a bit of help over the next month as Tracy recovered and worked through cardio, occupational, and speech therapy. I spent quite a bit of time down in Atlanta in March and April, enjoying time with my sister and her family and helping in any way I could. Now that we’re 3 months out from her cardiac event, I’m extremely happy to say that my sister is back to normal life with a healthy heart and the sharp-witted humor for which she’s known. If you’ve come to know Tracy’s story, you’ll know just what a miracle that is. We are so incredibly thankful.
Just four days before my sister’s cardiac event, she had come to visit with her youngest son and 3-month old daughter. We did a little lifestyle shoot with baby girl Ivy to mark her 3-month milestone. My sister didn’t really plan to be in the images—and that was weighing heavy on me those first few days in the hospital when we thought Tracy might not survive, the hundreds of unedited photos still on my computer at the time with no planned frames of mother and daughter—but I am thankful I snuck Tracy into a few. I’m also very thankful that we have time ahead of us to capture Tracy with her beautiful family. It is a powerful lesson to us all, though, as Miz Booshay says, to "get in the picture!" (this blog post of hers has always stuck with me, not that I put it into practice much:
http://thepioneerwoman.com/photography/2009/05/snap-out-of-it/).
