Why I Wish I Had a Video of My Mom's Voice (And Why I Film Families for a Living)
I Would Pay $50,000 to Hear My Mother's Voice
I last saw my mother on my wedding day. It was 2006, and wedding videography wasn't really a thing then. Someone took video with a camcorder, but after 10 years of being in a protective sleeve, it was scratched up and won't play.
I would give anything — and I do mean ANYTHING — to have video of her. The sound of her laugh. The way her face crinkled when she was happy. I would pay $50K right now to have just two minutes of her on film. Two minutes of her voice telling me she loves me. Two minutes of her just being her.
That's it. Two minutes.
And I don't have it. I never will.
What I do have are still photos. And I am so grateful for them … truly. But photos are silent. They freeze a moment in time, but they can't give you the sound of someone's voice, the rhythm of how they moved through a room, the specific way they said your name. A photo shows you what someone looked like.
A film shows you who they were.
After my mother passed, I started to understand something that I don't think most people grasp until it's too late: we are all so busy living our lives that we forget to capture them. We think there will be more time. More birthdays, more lazy Sunday mornings, more dinners around the table where everyone is talking over each other and someone spills their drink and it's chaotic and loud and completely, perfectly ordinary.
Me and My mom
We don't realize that ordinary is everything. Until one day, it's gone.
That's why I do what I do. When I step into a family's home … into the life they have built together …
I bring this grief with me. Not to be sad, but to be awake.
To see what they might not see in themselves yet. The way a dad absentmindedly kisses the top of his kid's head while reading the mail. The way a toddler runs down the hallway with absolutely zero agenda. The way a mom laughs at something her child says, completely caught off guard by how funny and strange and wonderful her little person already is.
I see it all. And I film it. Because I know … I know in my bones … that twenty years from now, that family is going to sit down together and watch their film, and someone is going to cry.
Not because something sad happened. But because it was so good, and they had almost forgotten.
I let my grief fuel me to do this work, and to do it well. I will never let my clients down … I don't even have that in me. I will always overshoot, over-edit, and over-deliver.
Because I understand the weight of what I'm holding when I walk into someone's home with a camera.
I'm not just making a cute video. I'm preserving the evidence that your family existed, that you loved each other…
that this beautiful, messy, ordinary life was real.
Someday, your kids will be grown. Someday, the voices you hear every single day right now will sound different, or be far away, or be gone. And you will want to go back … even just for two minutes.
So I want to ask you something, and I want you to sit with it for a moment before you scroll past:
If something happened tomorrow, what would you give to have today on film?
If that question hit you somewhere deep, I'd love to hear from you. You can reach out to me.
Let's make sure your family has something to hold onto forever.
