Memorial services are never an easy event to cover as a photographer, especially if they are for someone within your own family. My sister Johannah fought her cancer bravely for three solid months. And yet it seemed to be over so quickly. She seemed so strong all through the end. These three days of services seemed so out of place that it didn’t feel right to be meeting relatives and family friends under such circumstances after so long in such a quick time frame. None of this made any sense.
This collection of photos are the only sixteen of the nearly four hundred I took across three days of services for my sister that I and, I’m sure, my family feel most comfortable with sharing to the world; images of a place seemingly frozen in time where loved ones do not want the passage of time to commence – a sort of limbo from the outside world where the most precious of memories of our own lost loved one linger around the halls of the chapel and the green lawns of the mortuary. And while most of them only show the backs of my relatives and our family friends, I can only hope that these photos do justice to show that my sister was well loved and nurtured, even beyond her life on this earth.
jrafanan - photography and anime blog 