This particular video was well done, beginning with early childhood photos of her life, a chronologically built collection of mostly black and white photos that led through her years into color photos by the time she married and began her own family.

It was a meditative, fulfilling experience to watch her life unfold, to see her grow up and grow older, to see her generation eventually enlarged by the next generation she and her husband created. As her years passed, the photos expanded to include more and more faces of her families. The video captured the passage of the years of her life, right up to the moment of her final passage.

I appreciated the video and all the time and effort expended to create it. I also admitted to myself that no such video will ever play at my funeral. Not because my family won’t want it. But because my family won’t be able to create it. What they don’t realize now but will later is they have no pictures of me.

I realized this some time ago when I needed a picture of myself to accompany something I was working on and so I searched through my massive bank of photos. I discovered I have enough photos of my kids and grandkids to build entire albums of them, perhaps even movies if I space them close together and run them fast enough. But a photo of me? There wasn’t a single photo of my face. In all of those hundreds and hundreds of face shots, mine is missing. The reason is simple: I’m the one always behind the lens.

My family is very aware that whenever something picturesque happens, my phone camera comes out faster than they can say, “Mom, give it a rest.” I’m forced to take several shots of the moment because the first few shots show their annoyance, the next few shots their surrender, and the final shot captures the actual picture I want to preserve.

I’m not sure why I take so many photos. It could be because they’re free; I no longer take film to the store to have it developed. It could be because my phone camera in my pocket makes picture taking ridiculously immediate and easy. It could be because I think everything my family does is picture worthy. Or (this is most likely) it could be because I have become increasingly aware that my memory bank can no longer file every memory so I attempt to record the memories of our lives in my phone bank instead.

This works out nicely for my family. They have a private photographer who follows them around snapping photos they don’t even think about wanting at the time. And then, when they do want photos of our family sleigh riding in Idaho two years ago, I have those photos pulled up for them in seconds. If they want photos of our day at a lake beach five years ago, I can pull up that pile too. Their kids, their gardens, the autumn day we canned 100 jars of vegetables, last summer’s day at the zoo, every Christmas and Thanksgiving we’ve celebrated together, the car we owned in 1995, the cruise we all took 20 years ago–they know any photo they want is taken and safely banked with Mom, ready for when and if they ever want it. But they’ve never asked for a photo of my face. If they did, I would have to reply, “Nope, I don’t have that.”

If I was really broken up over this, I could take selfies. Awkward, weirdly-angled, out-of-focus selfies. Can you imagine watching a funeral montage of selfies?

I’ve created this situation myself. I take so many pictures of all of them all the time they naturally believe I’m recording everything worth recording. And I am. Except me.

I suppose the lesson to be learned here is this: Never assume you have a good photo of your loved one. Make sure you have that photo, and if you don’t, then take that photo.

Because the moment inevitably comes when you can’t.