What the Profile Picture Doesn't Tell: Facing Grief, Finding Joy

by Beth Saadati

A picture may be worth a thousand words,

but it seldom tells the whole story.

On July 1^st Mary Denman arrives. For twenty-one years I’ve avoided professional pictures, but now I need head shots—for a radio interview, for business cards, for a blog. I apologize in advance and warn Mary this might be hard.

Hard because I don’t photograph well. Because I’ve never figured out how to pose. Because nothing about “say cheese” comes natural to me. Because, after four years of braces, my lower jaw decided to grow and when I smile big it sticks out and, as my son says, my eyes “go Chinese.” 

Mary smiles and tells me to relax. “I’ll get the pictures you need,” she says. “Plus a couple for your husband to put on his desk.”

I keep secret the main reason I’ve dreaded today, however, although I think Mary might know. My daughter, Jenna, should be a high school senior. Mary ought to be photographing her.

I imagine Jenna standing in my place. Smiling. Posing. Radiant. Glowing. Instead, it’s me who’s left, with a story I wish I had no reason to share. The twisting in my gut reminds me of how much I hate suicide.

Mary suggests we start outside on the back patio. She motions to a bench, and I sit. She puts me at ease, snaps away, speaks kind words. But I can feel my forced smile, my dull eyes, and I’m sure that even the most gifted photographer can’t capture joy that isn’t there.

Next we move to the steps. They’re marked with my husband’s footprints and coated in South Carolina’s staining red clay. I sit against the twisted-iron rail anyway.

“Just be yourself,” Mary says. I loosen up and lean back. The railing wobbles. It’s broken, so I smile—a genuine grin—picturing what the photo would look like if it were to give. Mary captures the moment.

Afterwards, following a quick change of clothes, Mary motions me to the opposite sun-rotten bench. As I sit, I remember being in the same place nearly three years ago.

“Jenna,” I’d called, “could you take a picture for me?”

Gently I placed my new Nikon in her hands, slung the strap around her neck, showed her how to auto-focus the camera. I smiled at her, my effervescent 14-year-old girl, while she pressed the button.

“I’ve taken three, Mom. Is that enough?”

More Than a Date

by Beth Saadati

Some dates still wreck me. I’ve tried to convince myself that they’re nothing more than another day on a calendar page. But it doesn't work. 

Seventeen years ago I was given a new name, a treasured title. Mom. I tenderly cradled my newborn daughter, Jenna, in my arms. And, August 13th became my new favorite calendar date.

Jenna on her 13th birthday

I'd thought it would forever be a day of cake baking, candle blowing, and gift unwrapping. A day of rejoicing. A day of celebration.

Instead, on Monday I opened an e-mail and read a friend's thoughtful words: "You are in my fervent and constant prayers this week. I know it is bittersweet." 

I answered simply, my reply sincere.

“Thank you, Chris, for remembering and praying. Each birthday gets a tiny bit easier, but this is still the second hardest week of my year. I really wanted to see Jenna turn seventeen.”

As I finished typing the final line, something I’d heard about but hadn’t yet experienced happened. An instantaneous release of tears--a grief burst--came without warning. Then it stopped before I knew what had happened.

I’m not sure why typing that sentence triggered me. Probably because I long to see how Jenna would have blossomed—the beautiful young woman she surely would have become.

But it’s also because birthdays were a big deal to Jenna. My husband and I couldn’t afford polished, prepackaged party events, but Jenna didn’t care. With personal flair, she concocted her own.

Her ideas would start to simmer ten months before she turned a new number. Sometimes sooner. Sometimes immediately after her current celebration.

In my home yesterday, several of Jenna’s friends came and played Apples to Apples and Mafia, Four on a Couch and Taboo. Just like Jenna used to do.

As they engaged in friendly competition, I was surprised to find what I feared I'd lost—a backup dvd of Jenna’s funeral—after the original copy refused to work. For the first time since my daughter's death, I viewed part of the service.

The Purple Scarf

by Beth Saadati

When my thirteen-year-old daughter unwrapped the Christmas gift, her eyes sparkled with delight. In the box were two beautiful scarves in her favorite color, purple. For the first time, Jenna and I would match.

I fingered the fringe and ran my hand across the woven cotton weave. Then I read the tag that said they were made by girls once broken, now set free. It told about their private world of pain that shouldn’t exist—about all the wrong of sex-trafficking trade.

We wore the scarves, and we remembered. Atop my winter wool pea coat, I gently wrapped the long length around my neck and let it warm me from the cold I hate.

But Jenna found a second use for hers. Knotting it around the waists of her young sister and brother, she let them lead like horses while she held the reins. Squealing, they ran, lap-looping inside our small ranch.

A more cautious mom would have ended it. Instead, hearing them laugh with childlike delight, I merely delivered the dutiful “Make sure no one gets hurt!”

"Don’t worry! We won’t!” yelled Jenna. Even though, eventually, someone always would.

Not once did I think, in the same room a year later, words would be spoken that no parents’ ears should ever have to hear: “Your daughter is dead. It appears she took her own life.”

A policewoman asked if there was anything special about her purple scarf. What had happened was more than I could comprehend. Imagining how it must have occurred was beyond what I could bear.

At my request, friends packed up Jenna’s remaining scarves. With no desire to see mine again, I then rid myself of the only one I owned.

Two years later, however, something in me wanted it back. Though never again could I wear it, I longed to see it, touch it, hold it as a tangible reminder of what Jenna and I once shared. In faith, I asked for the impossible.