Less To Carry

I’ve heard it more times than I can count.
“When I’m gone, you’ll have this to remember me by.”
Or sometimes softer: “Take care of these things.”

I know that it’s always meant with love. Maybe it’s a quilt, or a necklace, or a box of old tools. Sometimes it’s a row of teapots that used to mean something. Often it’s things they poured themselves into and loved but now want you to carry forward. Kind of like it’s their way of saying, I was here, please don’t forget me.

But here’s the truth no one likes to say out loud — those things can feel crushing. Not just in weight, but in the way they lean against your chest when you’re grieving. Or even years later, when you feel like you’ve finally moved on and then trip over a box you couldn’t throw away. Suddenly you’re not just holding the loss of a person, you’re holding their wishes, their reminders… and, yes, their dust. It’s love turned into responsibility at the exact moment you can barely hold your own heart together.

And I think about that a lot with my own stuff — the photos, the drives, the website, the thousands of little moments I captured just because they made me happy. To me they are everything. To anyone else, they’re clutter on a screen. And the last thing I’d want is for someone I love to sit there one day, sorting through folders, trying to guess which version of “sunset-final-FINAL.jpg” I thought was worth keeping. (Yes, there are about six of those, that I can’t tell apart.)

It’s odd to admit this. On one hand, it’s selfish — saying these things only matter to me. On the other, it’s selfless — saying you don’t need to carry them once I’m gone. Maybe it’s both. Maybe that’s the point.

I’ve come to believe legacy isn’t about objects at all. It’s about how you spend the hours you get. Your parents will always be your parents — you carry their legacy whether or not you keep their furniture.

It always circles back to photography, for me. Not the pictures, exactly — but the process. It’s the long walks. The quiet that lets me think and process things. The comfort of noticing things few would notice. A leaf curling back on itself. A crack in the sidewalk that looks like it’s splitting the earth open. A shadow that doesn’t move when you do.

But here’s the part I don’t love admitting: that process doesn’t always play nice with relationships. I can put photography away for a short while. Letting the newness settle. Be present, like I’m supposed to. Still after a while, the need sneaks back in. The camera waits by the door, batteries are charged again, ideas flow. The walks, longer as the silence feels necessary again.

And that’s when it gets misread.
“You don’t want to be with me.”
“You’d rather be out there alone.”
“You care more about your pictures than about us.”

Which isn’t true. But how do you explain that walking alone through the woods with a camera isn’t abandonment — it’s oxygen? That a photograph is sometimes my version of flowers? Sometimes it’s flowers I end up photographing. That silence is where I go to find the words I can’t always say out loud?

I remember once leaving to chase a sunset. Conditions were right for something nice. I thought it would be gone in minutes. It was and by the time I came back, so was the conversation. That’s the kind of math I never get right — and maybe never will.

And often it turns into a burden. For me and them.

That’s why I’m writing this, I think. To justify it — to myself as much as to anyone else. Not because I don’t care. But because this is the only way I know how to care.

If legacy is measured in things, mine won’t amount to much. But if it’s measured in moments — in the act of noticing, in the way a quiet person still found a way to pay attention to the world — then maybe that’s enough.

I don’t mean to sound insensitive. I understand how much work goes into the belongings that people leave behind. Quilts stitched by hand, wood carved smooth. Weeks, months poured into something that won’t survive forever. And it’s painful to think about how quick those things are forgotten and end up boxed and donated, or simply forgotten. But maybe that isn’t failure. Maybe the fact that they mattered once is the whole point.

And maybe the kindest thing I can do isn’t handing down hard drives or asking someone to keep a website alive. Maybe the gift is leaving behind less weight.

So if one day you’re staring at my images, wondering what to do, here’s my permission: pull the plug. Delete them. Let them vanish. They’ve already done their job. They keep me company. They gave me happiness in silence and light when everything else felt dim. That was always enough for me.

And if that’s all I leave behind… well, maybe that’s enough.