Posted with permission from Twyla:

For those of you who knew Wade Collins, many great things can be said about him.  When he passed, his wife Twyla asked me to design the program for his memorial service.  How do you capture such a beautiful life on a folded piece of paper?  I had immediately thought of an unfinished painting of two cowboys I had seen just a few weeks earlier in his studio at their cabin in the mountains.  I envisioned a photo of the painting still sitting on his easel just as it had been the last time I was there.  Placing that image on the backside of the program would be a perfect tribute but I would need to make the trek up to the cabin to photograph it.

When I brought up this idea to Twyla she loved it but was hesitant to make the trip.  She wasn’t able to bring herself to visit to their precious hideaway just yet.  But on the evening before I was to drive up to the cabin, she decided she was ready and the next morning we found ourselves on the winding dirt road heading up into the San Juan Mountains.

Along the way we talked about the painting we had both seen on his easel just weeks before.  She explained to me the two cowboys were of Wade and his good friend who had passed away years earlier.  His friend happened to be Twyla’s father.  

Twyla and I were fully expecting to see the painting of her father and Wade when we walked into his studio.  But that was not to be.  Before we made it to the painting on the easel, we both glanced over on the far wall to see the painting of Wade and his father-n-law had already been finished.  He must have completed it within the last couple of weeks during one of his trips to check in on the cattle.

Instead, on the easel was another unfinished painting.  It was Wade’s favorite thing to paint…a mountain scene with a log cabin in the valley below with an outhouse in the foreground.  All of that was finished.  Unfinished and off to the right of the cabin was, bigger than life, a start of a cowboy on a horse riding up into the mountains.  Not yet been touched by paint, the transparent pencil drawn figures seemed to be flying up over the mountains and towards the heavens.  

Say what you will, but Twyla and I took it as a sign.  Wade was with us in that tiny studio that day.

As a photographer, I knew what to do.  I quietly backed off and allowed Twyla to have this moment to absorb everything.  Her last moment with Wade wasn’t in a hospital room with the EMT wheeling him outside and into the AirCare.  It wasn’t surrounded by strangers and machines.  Their last moment together was this moment.  Him saying goodbye in their special place.  A little hideaway where they had planned on retiring together.  Up in the mountains to enjoy their days in each other’s company with their long horn cows, horses, cats, and doggies.  This is where he wanted their goodbye to be.  If it was not to be that way in real life, he made sure it was going to happen in the after life.  And that was then I realized the part I played in it.  I slowly took out my camera and made sure it was on silent mode.  Quietly I asked if I could take photos.  Through her tears she only managed to nod her head, giving me permission to document this extremely private moment.  A moment that could have only be documented through an outside family member who was not so close to the emotions. Someone who knew how to turn off their feelings and turn on the work mode….just as I had done with every joyful wedding and with every tearful goodbye.  So I did just that.  Using a long lens and keeping my distance, I allowed her to do what came natural…to absorb…to touch…to feel Wade in his space.  My 30 years as a photographer told me when I got what I came to capture so at that point I walked outside and waited in the truck, allowing her time to privately talk to him and tell him the things she hadn’t had a chance to say.

I am out of words.  I’ll let my shutter speak for me now.