Sunflowers all in a row.

Photos are a funny thing.

They capture these brief moments in time, committing to posterity the people we loved and cherished, made memories with, fought with and made friends with again. People who we spent more time with than our own families in school, got drunk with, cried with, went through heartbreaks and traumas with. They held your hair out of your face when you vomited after stealing their parents alcohol. Their faces lit up with smiles when you walked into the classroom even though you only saw them yesterday. And you could never stay mad at each other long, never long at all. Photographs can only capture glimpses into these entire lifetimes.

The faces in the photos are beginning to disappear now, lives taken too soon. Others have moved away, or drifted emotionally; some lucky few have stayed as connected as ever before. We’re mothers now, wives, lovers, career women, activists, shit-stirrers, carers, and friends. Over the distance of time and geography, we are friends. Even beyond death itself.

And no matter how long apart we’ve been, we’ll meet with a hug, and with love, and a “do you remember when…” Not because we cling to our pasts, but because those were the defining moments in which we grew. Those are the moments who made us who we are today.

Do you remember when we painted your room bright purple, and sponged over the walls and doors with garish silver? Do you remember the weekend in Dunalley, chain smoking and drinking cheap grog, trying to take the dinghy out on the water, chopping green wood? The flat desiccated rat in the woodshed? Do you remember comforting me after I lost my parent’s mobile phone at the Royal Hobart Show? Do you remember endless hours spent obsessing over some boy, or cradling each other through our disappointments? Nights of partying at strangers houses, chasing rock stars across rooves and to the airport, sneaking into dive bars at age 16, trying to get back stage, random mountain missions in the snow, the dangers we faced in our youthful vitality.

We were invincible.

Or at least, we were.

Then there were the weddings, the babies, the random meetings in supermarkets where we promised so fervently to catch up properly soon but never did. The missed opportunities to make more memories.

The thing about photos is they are static, they don’t move, they don’t create; they merely document that split second in time. Yet they are still able to cause avalanches of memories that come crashing down and leave us overjoyed, nostalgic, and bereft.

Now instead of taking photos, we plant sunflowers for the ones we have lost. We pour our memories into those bright yellow petals. And we love.

No more photos. Not any more.

For Krysty, for Annie, for Semone.