everything. everyone. everywhere. ends.
i’m not quite sure why, but i’ve been thinking about the final episode of hbo’s six feet under a lot lately. in fact, one scene in that episode stands out to me as the defining moment of the entire series.
bound for new york city, claire fisher says a tearful goodbye to her family and then pauses before leaving to take a photo of everyone. as she looks through the viewfinder, her dead brother, nate, appears and whispers in her ear,
you can’t take a picture of this. it’s already gone.
what really gets me is that, after nate has his say, claire takes the photo anyway.
taken out of context, the exchange might not seem like much of anything, trite and chichéd even, but within the framework of the series and the characters, it is such a powerful moment. in fact, that scene made such an impression on me that i’m still considering it’s implications three years later.
perhaps nate is right, the essence of the moment has passed and is gone forever — it’s futile to try to capture it in a photograph. then again, perhaps claire is right, the moment will live on forever in her photograph — it’s foolish not to preserve it on film. i don’t really know. i think, perhaps, it is this dichotomy that makes the scene so poignant.
we are all aware, on some level, that everything around us is ending. it seems to me that as we each move closer to our own ending, some of us hold on to things, people, memories, that give us comfort and a sense of identity and permanence in our otherwise ephemeral existence. after all, a lifetime is just one fleeting moment after the other until there are no more; the things we collect along the way tell our story, become our story.
claire’s story ends in a home filled with photographs. i think, perhaps, all things considered, mine will as well.
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