The annual photograph records who was present and quietly records who was not.

A group photograph is a document of absence as well as presence. Years later the eye goes to who is missing from the row, and the picture answers a question nobody asked it, which is why old family photographs can be hard to look at without warning. The record was never neutral; it was taken on one afternoon, and everything else about that year sits outside the frame.

Take the picture anyway, and take more of the ordinary days that are not occasions. And be gentle with yourself about which photographs you are ready to look at, since there is no schedule for that.