OK, let me tell you my dirty little secret. I’m addicted to McMillan’s website.
For those not from Booneville, McMillan’s is a local funeral home.
To be more specific, it’s not like reading the obits every day. McMillan’s website has a webpage for each family to post photos of their loved one. At first, when someone I knew was at McMillan’s I would go to their page and scroll through the posted photos. Often I would see a side of this person that I had never know. If it was someone in their 80s or 90s, someone I had known all my life as “an old person” it was interesting to see photos of a young man kicked back next to a new 60s model car smoking a cigarette, or a young woman that I knew as a sour old lady with a 50s hairdo, no wrinkles, and a huge laugh on her face. There are photos with family members I didn’t know and photos in exotic locations.
I was touched in some way by these photos. I don’t know if that makes sense. But it made people who I only knew as acquaintances seem more real. The photos are a celebration of a life lived well in a way that the standard obituary isn’t. It’s also interesting to see what the family of each person chooses to put on these photo montages. I sometimes wonder if the person being memorialized would choose the same moments.
And then, I started clicking on names I didn’t know. Here’s some man I don’t know who apparently played basketball at New Site in the 70s. A ninety year old widow in a photo from the 50s with her Navy husband. Another lady in three photos of herself with her poodle. Sometimes, I will click through photos of a stranger and find a familiar face, thus discovering an unknown connections.
The obituaries tell you the facts. Who this person was, what they did, who they married, how they died. The photos tell a bigger story. In some ways a more important story. An old man who looks kind of sour in the cover photo, but beams at the little blonde haired three year old cutie on his lap next to a Christmas tree. The demur lady with the modest dress seems different from the younger version holding up a huge catfish grinning at the young man in the photo. I bet there was a story behind that fishing trip that made her family want that photo out there.
So is this a sick obsession? Am I intruding on other people’s space? I don’t think so. I think everybody has a special story, not just the biographical data of a standard obituary. And I think we honor these people by taking the time to want to see and share the story of their life.
So now I’m thinking I should start a file on my computer of the photos that tell my story. (That’s my Mamaw Martin in me folks–you know she told us for 30 years how we were to do her funeral. I’m getting a-hopefully-early start with my kids.)
What story will your photos tell?
