They laugh...

Wherever they go, they seem to be laughing; laughing with each other… sometimes at each other. But when they smile, it’s contagious. Together they’ve faced one of the hardest things that a family can go through and through it - they’ve come out together. They are fierce. A family standing together after mountains of heartache.

When I first met Amy she told me that she wanted to design a portrait session to celebrate some personal milestones in her family’s life. But later, I learned about someone who she wanted to celebrate with her portrait session. Though, the story is not mine to tell, I can see it in her eyes how much she misses him.

They brought Papa’s shirts to remember him. Amy, her brother, and sister wore his shirts… and later, their children wore them.

Threads of love and memories woven into flannel cotton wrapped around their sweet smiling faces.

And I’m sure it is, just as with my own Dad, that after each passing day – the pain never leaves. The empty hole remains where it was once whole.

But at the end of it, what matters is how we treat today; how we remember, how we laugh, and how we cry. If we can celebrate and remember our loved ones through good pictures, memories, and cotton flannel shirts – then it is us who are blessed. The old saying especially rings true for this family, and for mine: For it is greater to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.