By Susie Perloff
In published obituaries, people’s photos sometimes date from decades earlier. When some 92-year-old men die, their obits show them in a Marine uniform or Army cap, staring blankly at the camera.
It strikes me as odd. Don’t they have any good images from the last 70 years? Or have they not posed well since 1951? Or did their widows or adult children, sorting through attic boxes of memorabilia, find the single picture that best shows them being all they could be? Probably any of the above.
I’m reading an obit for a man named Robert, who died at home at age 74, survived by two sons and two grandchildren. This rugged-but-amused cutie would have made my head turn had I met him at a fraternity party. But neither he nor I has attended a fraternity party since Richard Nixon was in the White House. So why this photo?
Makes me wonder: What snapshot would I choose to post in my own death notice? My favorite picture of myself, my loveliest, my most natural photo, dates from when I was 39. (Disclosure: my elder son is now 56.)
It was July. The sun was hot, the feelings, mellow. My college roommate, Barbara, was visiting for the weekend. Since graduation, after earning a master’s at Yale, she’d found a joyous and lucrative career as a fashion model for one of the top outfits in New York. This time, she was standing on the other side of the camera.
To shoot me, she chose my son’s discarded MATH TEAM T-shirt and applied a dash of mascara to my eyes. She found a shady spot in the backyard.
In addition to being intrinsically stunning, Barbara knew how an expert photographer could make any subject, even me, feel pretty. As she tilted the camera up and sideways, she maintained a constant patter about how beautiful I was. “Nice, Susie. You look great. Beautiful smile. Look up. Beautiful. Beautiful! You’re so lovely. Yes! Show me how beautiful you are.” Like that, for 15 minutes, until I felt gorgeous.
That’s the picture I want to represent me for eternity, no matter how old I am when I pop off.
So I ask other people what image they would choose. Often their faces go soft, their voices sound tender. They remember moments and scenes that rank as personal bests and would perfectly grace their everlasting memories.
A man called Smiley, who is only 34 and never thinks about death notices, remembers Christmas at age six. His birthday falls on December 25, a singular and unforgettable date. He would choose a picture of that day.
Linda, 72, prefers the formal portrait on her current business website. “I’m not egotistical,” she says, “so I wouldn’t use the picture of me as a high school cheerleader or the one of me as a hippie and feminist that ran in Life magazine.” (Really, Linda? Not egotistical? But you had to tell me that you were a cheerleader and appeared in Life?)
Steve, age 62, loves the dashing and dapper picture from his high school prom, even though, he says, he was just on the verge of coming out as gay.
Riana, 74, likes the picture of herself posing, smiling, in good physical shape, 34 years ago.
Jonathan, 65, would pick one of himself in Eleuthera, an island in the Bahamas, surrounded by blue sky and sea and white sands. “The sky is critical,” he says. However, since the picture exists only in his memory, he cannot choose it.
So that’s why young-at-heart old guys stare into the distance: they’re remembering happy times, important moments, lasting memories. Great photographs.
Which picture of yourself would you choose?
When Susie Perloff was an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania, she was one of the nine women who integrated the men’s newspaper, the Daily Pennsylvanian. She has been writing and editing nonfiction ever since, with bylines in more than 100 periodicals and dozens of websites. She teaches adults to write nonfiction, and that’s the truth. She has won four national writing awards.
