Uncle Phil is dead. The death was sudden, as death is, but his death was unexpected. I got a call on the Fourth of July from my father. Uncle Phil had cancer, he said. On the fifth I got another call. Uncle Phil had died, my father said.
Neither Uncle Phil nor his wife, Sue, suspected anything. Aunt Sue would later say that Uncle Phil had recently been often tired and feeling sick. It was only when things escalated–Uncle Phil required hospitalization earlier in the first week of July–that they got a diagnosis. He had cancer. It started in his lungs and spread. It spread throughout his body and recovery was unlikely. Uncle Phil, like his father, Bob, in October of last year, decided to decline treatment and meet his ending on his own terms.
And here we are in Tacoma, beginning. Meeting for the first time. We're family. Why hadn't we met?
Is it macabre that I'm taking photos? Yes, it is. Absolutely. It's something I'd say (and know as I type this) is tasteless, tacky, and invasive of privacy. But this is the first chance I've had to take an image. Taking images of people, especially the people in my family, is what I do. That's how I explain me in the context of us, how I explain us to others. That Uncle Phil is lying out in a casket right now is purely circumstantial. And I rationalize any counterarguments I or others, preëmptively would come up with by saying this was common in the Victorian era. Post-mortem photos of the deceased were and still are a way to remember them. My other uncles couldn't make it. Maybe these images would give them closure.
If we'd met when he was alive, I would already have an image of him. If we'd met when he was alive, I would not feel I had to take this photo. I'm frustrated by and mad about this. Frustrated there's no reason, or no reason I'm aware of, for why we never met in my 33 years. Whatever I'm feeling is not going to be as complicated and deep as what my father's feeling right now. He and Phil haven't seen each other in 42 years, not since Phil left Beaver Falls and Pennsylvania.
So, Phil and I start here, at death. This photo, this moment, is the opening and closure of our relationship.