Pictures of You

After her older brother died, Hannah made a conscious effort to photograph absolutely everything.

           As a kid, she never enjoyed being in pictures during family gatherings and events. Every birthday, Hannah dreaded the rotation of different family members as pictures were captured on her dad’s Kodak disposable cameras. As she grew older and had more siblings and more cousins, the process became tedious, and Hannah enjoyed being photographed less and less.

           Although she greatly detested family photos, her older brother, Josh, loathed them even more. He was the textbook definition of a moody teenager and would always complain about the number of photographs he would have to pose for. Once he reached 13, he loudly protested being in photos and would only be photographed once per gathering. He only appeared in images with their parents and all five of their siblings; Josh and Hannah were the oldest with a five-year age gap between them, followed by their two twin brothers, Jackson and Brayden, and then the baby of the siblings, Molly.

Whilst Josh loudly protested participating in family photos and chose to not be included in more than one photo, Hannah was too scared to face the wrath of her parents for disobeying them. Josh could always get away with any of his ultimatums; in Hannah’s eyes, he was always the favourite child (although their parents would never outright confirm this).

As time progressed, Josh’s siblings began to idolise him. It seemed as though the older he became, the wiser and more interesting he became to his siblings. Jackson and Brayden worshipped the ground he walked on. When the boys started playing football for their local kids’ team, Josh always made it a priority to attend all of their matches, no matter what other commitments he also had that sometimes clashed with their games. After Josh turned 15, he applied for a weekend job coaching the junior football teams and being an umpire during matches. Because of his heavy involvement in the leagues, all the children he worked with and coached also began to idolise him. Although he was definitely still a grumpy and short-tempered teenager, working with the football clubs brought out a softer side to Josh that was rarely seen outside of the football field. The same dedication and determination that he put towards coaching was the same support he gave to all four of his siblings as they grew up.

On weekends when Josh would coach and referee games, Hannah’s parents were also present to support their boys. Molly was still young during this time, and would often find her way to the playground adjacent to the football field with kids of a similar age whose older siblings were playing football, too. More often than not, Hannah would play the role of babysitter and followed Molly around the playground and would miss out on watching the football matches. Hannah’s dad always brought a new disposable camera each week to the games to take photos of Jackson and Brayden as they played, and occasionally tried to sneakily take photographs of Josh as he worked. Multiple times, Josh would catch him aiming his camera in his direction and quickly flip his father the bird to ruin the picture. It used to upset Hannah’s parents that almost all pictures they captured of Josh during his time working with the leagues were of him flipping them the bird.

When Josh turned 18 and finally got his licence after graduating from high school, he started working as a delivery driver for a local pizza shop. The pay wasn’t astronomical, but it was enough to give him some spending money as well as money for petrol every week. The hours were flexible, and he could continue coaching on the side on weekends whilst delivering pizzas during the week.

At first, Hannah’s parents were disappointed that Josh didn’t attend university straight out of high school and instead chose to work full-time. They worried that he would lose motivation and spend the year lazing around like many of his mates did, but Hannah reminded her parents that Josh had technically been working since he was 15 and had a great work ethic. When Josh came home and told their parents he had gotten the pizza delivery job almost a week after graduation, their disappointment evaporated and was replaced with pride. They apologised to Josh for underestimating him and explained that they just wanted him to build a successful lifestyle and career. He accepted their apology, promising his parents that after accumulating some savings and work experience, and possibly taking a holiday to Melbourne, he would reconsider the possibility of attending university.

He always knew what to say to their parents to placate and please them.

Four months after he started his pizza delivery job, and the evening before Hannah’s 13^th birthday, Josh was driving around the suburbs delivering pizzas as he normally would on an average Friday night. His shift finished at 9:30pm, and he planned on taking a quick detour to go to their local grocery store. He wanted to buy a tonne of sweets to share between himself and his siblings in the morning for Hannah’s birthday, as well as Hannah’s favourite dessert: chocolate mud cake.

For a Friday night, the streets were relatively quiet and still. It was winter, and Josh assumed many people wouldn’t want to be out late because of how cold it became during nighttime. He made his trip to the grocery store and had loaded up shopping bags with treats for the family before making his way home.  

Josh sat patiently at a red light at one of the intersections several blocks from their home. As cars zoomed past in front of him, he stifled a large yawn and kept his eyes on the traffic lights. He was absolutely wiped, and definitely planned to have a big sleep-in the following morning. The cars travelling from his left and right slowed to a stop as their traffic light turned red, and a moment later, Josh’s turned green. He eased his way into the intersection, beginning the final stretch of his journey home.

Seemingly out of nowhere, an SUV ploughed through one of the red traffic lights adjacent to Josh and slammed into the driver’s side door of Josh’s car. The impact sent his car careening across the intersection, flipping twice until it came to a halt as it smashed into a pole.

Other drivers scrambled towards Josh’s car, several of them dialling 000 as they raced over to try and pull Josh from the wreck. As the entire intersection descended into chaos, tire screeches could be heard as the drunken man who was the driver of the SUV hightailed it away from the scene of the accident in his damaged car. The SUV’s front wheels had blown and shredded apart on impact, the rims leaving behind scorch marks on the road as the man drove away in the opposite direction.

Josh couldn’t be pulled from the mangled vehicle until emergency services arrived on the scene within ten minutes. By the time the SES workers managed to pry open his side of the car, he had already passed away.

Within half an hour, police tracked down the drunk driver by following the scorch marks along the roads, and he was arrested. Within an hour of the accident, Hannah’s parents were notified of the accident and made their way to the scene. Hannah was forced to stay home to watch her siblings, pacing through their home as she waited for updates from her parents. They told her when they formally identified his body. They let her know when they had finished talking to the authorities. They informed her that they would be taking his possessions from his car that were salvageable, then returning home.

Her parents returned home with the contents of his car boot, most of which were undamaged. His backpack with his pizza parlour uniform inside, his duffle bag with his football uniforms and equipment, and the bags of groceries he had collected that evening. The candy he purchased made it through the accident, but a large chocolate mud cake had not survived the crash. It had been pancaked and smeared inside its flimsy plastic packaging, with streaks of green frosting visible mixed with chocolate ganache – most likely frosting used to spell ‘Happy Birthday’ across the surface of the cake.

There were no birthday celebrations the following day.

Hannah had never cried so much in her life. She wasn’t sure she would ever stop crying. She spent the day huddled in her parent’s king-sized bed with her siblings. Whilst their mum and dad visited a funeral home on her birthday, Hannah and her brothers and sister spent the day watching Disney films and slowly working their way through the sweets Josh had purchased the night before. Whenever one of the four of them would sniffle or let out a choked sob, they huddled together tighter. They hardly talked to each other as they worked their way through multiple DVDs, and only left the sanctuary of their parent’s bed to use the bathroom.

That evening, Hannah sat across from her parents at their dinner table, long after the younger kids had gone to their own beds to try and sleep. Scattered across the table were pictures taken throughout Josh’s 18 years of life. Josh as a toddler, smiling up at his dad as he held his hands and took his first steps. Josh standing in their front garden on his first day of primary school, his backpack almost the same size as him. His first day of high school – standing in the same spot in their front yard where his picture was taken on his first day of primary school – with Brayden clinging to his left arm as Jackson glued himself to Josh’s right side, both of whom were heading to their first day of primary school. Josh’s high school graduation picture taken several months earlier.

As the photographs moved through Josh’s teen years, they became sparse as he began to avidly avoid being photographed. From 15 onwards, the only photographs of him were his annual school photos, one photograph each from Christmas and Easter every year with his parents and siblings, and their dad’s photographs he would take as Josh worked on the football field.

As Hannah analysed the small number of photographs of Josh from his teen years, a new fear that she had never thought existed settled in her chest: what if one of her other siblings or her parents died tomorrow, and she didn’t have enough pictures to look back on to remember them? This new fear made her feel a new level of appreciation towards her dad always making the kids participate in family photos.

Hannah wished they had pushed to photograph Josh more often.

Since Josh’s death, Hannah almost always had a camera in her hands, regardless of whether or not there was a family event happening. She started taking pictures of her family and friends during everyday life, cataloguing even the most innocuous moments with her loved ones.

As she moved through her teens and with the improvement of technology, she swapped her digital camera for an iPhone and continued to take pictures daily.

When she turned 18 and graduated from high school, unlike Josh, Hannah immediately enrolled into university. She applied for a private photography school and got accepted, which meant she would need to move from Hobart to Melbourne to attend school.

Understandably, her parents were hesitant in allowing her to move to a different state. After Josh died, their mum and dad became more paranoid when it came to the kid’s safety. It took several months of persuasion from Hannah to have her parents teach her how to drive when she turned 16, although she rarely chose to drive once she got her license. She felt safer taking public transport.

Eventually, Hannah’s parents relented and helped her move to Melbourne. They helped her find an apartment, explored the city with her for a week, and then headed back to Hobart when it was time for her to attend her university orientation.

Hannah created a life in Melbourne, and continued to photograph every second of that life.

Seven years later, and Melbourne felt more like a home than just a city she lived in. She was in a long and healthy relationship, she worked as a photojournalist and loved her job, and the friends she had made during her years studying became her second family. Twice a year, she would take a week’s holiday and visit her parents and siblings back in Hobart. Her parents had bought some land in the last several years surrounding the family home and filled their property with animals; from horses and goats, to cats and dogs, to a variety of vibrantly coloured birds.

Every visit back to Hobart would always end the same way: her family would sit around the kitchen table with photographs strewn across its surface, reminiscing on the life they once had with Josh in its midst. Every visit, she encouraged her parents to scan all the images to create a digital album that Hannah would arrange into a timeline. Her parents always complained that there were too many photos to work through, and her siblings echoed this complaint. During her final visit for the year at Christmas, Hannah promised that she would work through the photographs and upload them onto a digital album when she came to visit for Easter the following year.

Shortly into the new year, Hannah was jolted awake by her phone trilling from her bedside table. Hannah glanced at the time and noticed it was barely 3am. The person calling her was her mother.

Anxiety filled her heart with dread. Her mother never called her at this time during the night.

“What’s wrong?” Hannah immediately questioned as she answered the call.

When her mother spoke, she could tell that she was crying, and her voice sounded hoarse. “There’s been a fire,” her mother paused for a moment to cough violently. In the background, she could hear her father asking her mother if she was okay to speak. “We’re all okay, we managed to make it out of the house,” she reported as her coughing subsided. “We just have some smoke inhalation and minor burns to deal with.”

Hannah felt bile rise in her throat and choked out a sob. “Fucking hell, I thought you were going to say one of you died.”

Her mum must have had the call on loudspeaker, as her dad chimed in, “We lost the three dogs and two cats and all the birds.” He cleared his throat and sniffled. “The horses and goats were in the paddock furthest from the house, so they were safe.”

Hannah slumped back onto her bed and closed her eyes as tears fell. “Thank God you’re all safe. I’ll call work first thing in the morning and ask for the week off and come back down to Hobart.”

“Thank you, baby,” her mum murmured. “I’m so sorry we woke you; I just didn’t want you to hear it from someone else and wonder if anything had happened to us.”

A guttural sob escaped Hannah as she came to a realisation that filled her chest with agony. “Mum, dad… All the photos of Josh…” she choked out between sobs. “They’re all gone! I should have scanned them when I was there over Christmas!”

She heard her mum break down into sobs on the other end of the phone. As she heard her dad consoling her, Molly grabbed their phone. “Hi Sissy,” she croaked as she fought back her own tears. “Don’t blame yourself. You could have never predicted something like this happening.”

Hannah wiped her face on her duvet and sighed. “I just wish I had worked on them at Christmas instead of putting it off.”

“We understand. There’s no point in making yourself more upset over it right now,” Molly sighed. “I know this is probably impossible, but try and get some sleep, and we’ll see you when you get here.”

Hannah nodded and drew her blankets tightly around herself. “I love you all.”

“We love you, too. ‘Night, Sissy.”

The following morning, Hannah notified her boss of the events overnight and was immediately given the week off. By lunchtime, she was on a flight headed for Hobart.

The reunion with her family was sombre. She hugged each of her siblings extra tight, and collapsed into sobs as she reached her parents. She spent the rest of the day with her family at their grandparent’s home where they were seeking refuge.

The following morning, the family returned to their home. The only section of their home that was left standing was a brick tower in the spot where their fireplace had sat in their lounge room.

Slowly, they ambled through the wreckage, examining the charred remains of their personal items. Most of their possessions were too damaged to recover.

As Hannah moved into the section of the house which would have been the office, she kicked aside burned pieces of wood as she searched through the ashes. Something caught her eye as she examined the ground, and she gasped loudly. She fell to her knees in the rubble and scrambled to grab the two items that caught her attention.

As she stared at the items in her hands, she heaved great sobs from her chest. Her family raced to her side as soon as they heard her cries, and immediately her parents and sibling were also crying.

In her hands were the only two photographs that survived the fire. The first was a family picture taken at Josh’s 18^th birthday, four months before he died.

The second photograph was a teenage iteration of Josh, dressed in his football umpire uniform, flipping the bird towards the camera.