For those who know Sam and me well, it will come as no surprise that Sam took a ton more photos and videos than I did—especially videos! For whatever reason, I’ve never been one to capture videos, and I rarely watch back the few that I have taken. I’m more the type to enjoy a school play in the moment rather than view it through my phone’s camera. But boy, am I grateful Sam had a different approach. She took thousands of photos and videos of Carter and Sofia. Many of those are now the most precious gifts I have—memories I can replay forever. One of the first things I did after Sofia passed away was go through all of Sam's photos from 2020-2024 and pull out my favorite ones of Sofia. Sam, like most people, backs up her photos to iCloud, but I needed to have these special photos saved in more than one place. It would take me weeks to go through over 10,000 photos. I selected many of them for the slideshow we played at Sofia’s Celebration of Life. The task of sorting through that many...
A therapeutic landing spot for my thoughts as I navigate a grief unimaginable to most