What to do with your pet's photos after they're gone
Hundreds of them, scattered across years of camera roll, and you can't quite bring yourself to open the folder. That's a very common place to be stuck. A few things genuinely help.
Why the camera roll is so hard to open
The photos arrive unsorted, so you can't brace for them: one scroll can land you on the last week without warning. Avoiding the folder for months is not failing to grieve. The medium is just hostile.
What actually helps
Five things, smallest first. Do one, or all of them, in any order.
Pick the ones that sound like them
Not the ten best photos. The ten that sound like them: mid-sneeze, in the good chair they stole, the terrible dark one from the night they came home. This is usually where it stops being unbearable. You're not looking at a loss, you're picking out a personality.
Why making something helps
A person's death comes with things to do: a service, an obituary, food at the door. A pet's comes with none, and you go to work the next day. Choosing, writing, assembling gives the grief somewhere to go, and authoring a story about a loss is one of the few things reliably shown to help.
There's no deadline
If it's been two years and the folder is still closed, nothing is lost. People make these on the tenth anniversary as often as in the first month. The photos will keep.
Common questions
My photos are old and low quality. Does that matter?
No. Old phone photos, slightly blurry ones, screenshots from a video - they all work, and they're usually the ones that feel most like the real animal. We gently sharpen and stabilise where it helps, and leave them alone where it doesn't.
Do you change or generate images of my pet?
No. We use the photos you send, as they are - no generated faces, no added wings or halos, nothing invented. An approximation of a face you loved is the one thing nobody wants.
Can I include video clips, not just photos?
Yes, and they're worth including - a few seconds of them moving, or of their name being called, changes the whole thing.