This sounds like a line out of Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen), but surprisingly it's not in there. It should be. It's exactly fits the seemingly trite but really profound advice in that song.Take more pictures.
As my brother and I were planning for my mom's memorial service, we needed to get about 30 pictures of her throughout her life for a slide show. Dan already had 20 from the ones he found in her house, and the many he had of her with his girls (her granddaughters). So I just had to pick 10 of the best from my collection.
I found 9. 9 pictures of my mom in all of my digital photos. I've been taking digital pictures since I got my first digital camera around Halloween 1998. I have well north of 15,000 pictures. And I have 9 unique, good pictures of my mom.
3 of those I scanned in from my wedding pictures. And granted, I do have more of her at the wedding. But most of those are dupes; her standing in formation with various permutations of the family, with slight smile variants in each.
The last really good picture I have of her is from Mother's Day, 2005. 3½ years ago. I've seen her many times since. I have pictures from those visits. Mostly of the girls, my nieces. I have the side of her head. an arm holding a granddaughter's hand. Her fuzzy in the background.
I even have a bunch of my dad from this time. He had a stroke, on top of a litany of other heath problems. We're all acutely aware of his mortality. But we didn't think the same way about my mom.
I'm trying the be pragmatic about it. She didn't mind. To her, the granddaughters were the center of attention. They are a the ones that should have their pictures taken. But I can't help but feel a little guilty and a lot stupid. After all, it takes a minimal amount of time and effort to move the camera 1° and take one more picture.
So do it. Don't take anyone in your life for granted. And if you've got the camera out, get a picture of everyone.
So sorry to hear that your mother has passed away. I can only recall meeting her once, but though the circumstances were a little awkward, she was very nice to me then.
We went through the same thing when my mother-in-law passed away last month. We never took a lot of pictures of her, but we had a ton of pictures by other people taken from the last time we took her back to the States in Christmas of 2006 (she was too ill to return with us last summer), and found a very nice one from that to use in the ceremony.
Taking pictures is good, but increasing the number of times your whole family gets together to celebrate is even better.