Cameras in the dark in anticlimatic

When we were kids, my brother and I got our hands on our parents point and shoot film camera one night after lights out, and discovered a really fun game. If the camera is empty of film, but still has a charged battery, you can wind the shutter and fire off the flash as much as you want. And, as you well know I’m sure, if you strobe a light in the dark, it leaves a still image flash of whatever you happen to be looking at burned on your eyes for second or so, before fading.

There is something about the presence of a person, which I find very similar to that game, when they die.

It’s more than their presence, it’s their sort of ever evolving idea or opinion of them. As time passes, the people we know do grow and change, and our relationship with them evolves and shifts in tandem. But when they die, it’s like a freeze flash of the last time you knew them- or maybe the best, most potent time you knew them- and that flash lingers, still- in a an unnatural, uncanny kind of way. When it fades, the fading is only as unnerving as it is somewhat soothing in its return to something familiar and logical. It doesn’t fade completely to black, but rather to a thin frame to collect dust.

All those from my past that I loved, and claim to love still, seem to me as faded busts on a shelf. The meaning I once carried for them seems to have left me. I’m not sure how to feel about that.

Last updated November 20, 2021