Life with Deb, Rob and Erin

I met Deb and Rob in 1985, when I photographed their engagement session. Erin was born a few years later. I have been photographing their family almost every year since then.

A few years ago, just after Christmas, Erin was home and Deb and Rob were in Texas. As Erin watched in horror, a fire ball raced through their home. Because it was electrical, the fire department could not extinguish the fire until the main power line was shut off. That time delay kept the fire burning and the home was completely destroyed. If the fire had been a few hours later, Erin would have been sleeping and could not have escaped the explosion. Deb is still so thankful that they came home to a burned out house and not for a funeral.

I was able to replace every portrait that I had taken over all those years, but it was a slow and tedious process. Deb and I met several times to look at the negatives from the burned portraits and make decisions as to which portraits would be replaced as wall portraits and which portraits would become part of a family album. After that, we chose frames for the wall portraits. Since many of the frames were no longer made, we got to choose new frames.

I delivered two portraits soon after the house was completed, to start with the "making the house a home" process. The album came next, so Deb was able to see the family change over the years.

Yesterday was an encouraging day. I met with Deb to hang the final wall portraits and to help with the "stairway wall." Deb and Rob's original stairway wall had twenty years of family portraits and candid events. Deb showed me the photograph of the original burned wall, with white blobs of melted goo that had held precious memories. Deb started from scratch and created new memory photographs, then framed each photograph or group of photographs. She was able to salvage a few charred photographs and made the best of the horrible situation. We took each group and started hanging. It started with a portrait of Rob's parents, then Deb and Rob's wedding portraits, then years of family memories. There is one spot left at the bottom of the stairs for them to create a new photograph during Christmas this year.

I was struck by the few bites of laughter that could come out of the tragedy. Deb showed me a photograph of Rob's sunglasses. They looked like a modern art exhibit. The frames stayed the same and the glasses melted into a colorful blob. Their soap dispenser in the bathroom was a melted blob of goo with melted soap dripping out of the bottom. The funniest image was of the check that they had written to their housekeeper. The check was in perfect condition, surrounded by charred everything!

This replacement order cost over $10,000. If we had replaced every wall portrait and every smaller portrait exactly as the original orders, it would have been $30,000. I left in awe of the rebuilding process and the healing that they have had to endure. I left thanking God for a friendship that I have enjoyed over the years.

Deb says it is "the same, but different." I agree.