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Modern Day Photographic Memory
The reason why
I take so many pictures nowadays
Is because three days after you died in that ICU bed,
After your spirit suddenly left your body
And your physical presence here on earth was no more
I abruptly realized
And was shaken to my very core to find out
That in all the many years we had known each other,
And throughout all of the wonderful times we shared together
And despite all of the countless thousands of other pics we were in with others
That there was not a single photograph of just the two of us
Not a single picture, blog post, meme, JPEG, social media entry,
Of just you and me,
Not a one smart phone pic, candid photo, or digital image
To record our lovely friendship
For the sake of posterity and beyond.
Since the corrosive sadness I had felt that day,
Without that one picture of you and me to cherish, to treasure, to share,
I now spend my days
Obsessively trying to document and faithfully record
Smiling visages of friends and their friends of friends
In a glimmering sprinkle of hope
That I may not lose another chance
For modern day photographic memory
Naveen Pemmaraju, MD, is Assistant Professor in the Department of Leukemia at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.