DRUGS STOLE OUR FAMILY PHOTO…

DRUGS STOLE OUR FAMILY PHOTO

We will never take another complete family photograph.

We can gather everyone together.

We can dress for the occasion.

We can stand close, put our arms around one another and smile when someone says, “Look at the camera.”

But the photograph will never be complete.

There will always be someone missing.

There will always be an empty space where McKayla should be.

At every birthday.

Every Christmas.

Every wedding.

Every new baby.

Every ordinary Sunday when the family happens to be together.

We will take the photograph because life continues, even when you do not want it to.

But when I look at it, I will not see everyone who is there.

I will see the one who is not.

I will wonder where McKayla would have stood.

What she would have worn.

Whether she would have smiled properly or made a face at the last second.

Whether she would have had children standing beside her.

Whether age would have changed her face but left those beautiful dimples exactly the same.

People say our loved ones are always with us.

I want to believe that.

But can a camera capture an angel?

Can it photograph the daughter, sister and granddaughter we feel beside us but can no longer see?

Can it fill the empty space?

No.

Drugs did not just steal McKayla from one family photograph.

They stole her from every photograph we had not taken yet.

They stole decades of birthdays, Christmas mornings, weddings, vacations and ordinary afternoons.

They stole the pictures we would have placed on our walls.

They stole the photographs her future children might have treasured.

They stole the proof of a future she should have lived.

We are still a family.

But we are an earthly family with one of our own missing.

We are the part that remains.

The part expected to gather.

The part expected to smile.

The part expected to keep living while knowing someone who belongs in every picture will never stand beside us again.

That is what drugs steal.

Not only a life.

They steal a person from every future memory.

They leave an empty chair at the table, an empty place in our arms and an empty space in every family photograph for the rest of our lives.

McKayla was here.

She belonged in our family.

She belongs in every photograph still to come.

But drugs made certain that all we will ever be able to do is imagine her standing there.

Drugs stole our family photo.

And no picture of us will ever be complete again.

McKayla Jean Jones.

Mickey JJ.

Forever 27.