Sandy

Sandy — ©2025 Patrick T. Power

As I was going through my piles of negatives, deciding which ones to start scanning, I came across this one, which was the first frame of a series of photographs I'd taken of dried flowers.

Sandy, so named by my daughter, I believe, was a kitten we'd agreed to take in from our babysitter, whose cat had recently had a litter. We already had an eleven-year old cat at the time, but she was a bit on the ornery side most of the time. Sandy was playful and seemed to like our company.

I'm guessing that this photo was taken in August or so of 1990. I had recently purchased a used medium format camera, a Mamiya RB67 (which I still have), with the notion of doing some freelance work with it on the side. I also had purchased a lighting kit, and set up a makeshift studio in our basement, if for no other reason than to practice. Several times, the kids modeled for me, but in this case, as I noted, I was photographing a dried bouquet of roses, which might have been from Penny's and my recent wedding anniversary, when Sandy decided to check things out.

Anyway, had I chosen some other day to scan the negatives, it probably wouldn't have hit me as hard, but as the image of Sandy came up on my screen during the preview scan, it occurred to me that it was Christmas Eve of that year that Sandy took to the back of our bedroom closet and died. It's certainly not the happiest of Christmas memories, but this picture brought it all back.

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