Thanksgiving that year brought the three of us together at the coast — Mum, AJ, and me. We felt it, even then; AJ held her in the surf and grew quiet, his eyes welling, though neither of us could have said why. Something in the rhythm of the waves, in the pause between laughter and crash, asked me to hold these moments rather than simply pass through them, the way I so often do.

What came back in the edit was four photographs unlike the rest of my work — quieter, less abstracted, the palette softened until it was nearly hers. Mum found her beauty plainly, in what was simply in front of her; a different fluency than mine, but no less complete. These four meet her there, on her own terms, in her own language. We knew, even then, how precious that weekend was. We simply didn't know it would be our last. In retrospect, it occurs to me — the light did.