It seems like I've been taking pictures all of my life.

And when you're a photographer like me that makes sense.

My name is Larry Michael Hamel, but my family and friends call me Michael. I'm a 21-year-old photography student at North Central Texas University, the same university my parents graduated from many years before, and I'm in the process of trying to get my own photography studio, Hamel Images, off the ground.

I've been capturing a variety of subjects to include people, landscapes, flowers, moments and feelings on film, whether it be black or white or color, as long as I can remember. My love of photography evolved from my parent's love and pursuit of the arts. Photography was a hobby for my father, Malan, but my mother, Lathal, enjoyed it too.

Both my parents have a deep love for the arts, and they encouraged us to pursue creative endeavors, so when I told them I wanted to be a photographer they were all for it. But they would have supported me even if I hadn't chosen that path.

My view of the world has always been what I've seen through the camera lens like the images floating in the chemicals in the plastic tubs I'm developing in my apartment darkroom. They tell the story of my life just like snapshots scattered across the plastic pages of family albums or in the frames displayed on the walls of my home.

These snapshots are frozen moments of time that are never changing. They say, 'we're here', they capture our history and preserve our legacy for generations.

As I stand here on this crisp cool November morning, staring at this cold stone monument, I wish I could wipe the imprint this picture of horror and tragedy before me.

For a moment pictures from a more pleasant time flash through my mind. Pictures of me as an infant crawling in blue pajamas, the ones with warm, fuzzy feet, through a sea of toys on the floor. Pictures from my birthdays, especially my first one, the birthday boy sitting high in a throne (a high chair), wearing an ear splitting grin and chocolate frosting and cake crumbs on my face. Pictures from Christmases past, a bright-eyed little boy, tearing into packages wrapped in colorful paper and bows, thrilled that Santa had brought a baseball glove, bat, ball and gear. Pictures from my first hair cut, a sad little kid who couldn't stand that the barber had snipped off the long, light brown strand of hair I'd had been growing for first five years of my life. Pictures of me as a toddler in my birthday suit, splashing around with my rubber duckie, which was the favorite of my bath toys, in the tub.

My parents have lots of things like that. Like that lock of hair from my first haircut, the first tooth I lost, my first artistic rendering in crayon and stuff like they that. They even have the blanket, outfit and baby booties they brought me home from the hospital in. I don't know why they've keep items like that but they have a lot of strange things like the ceramic ashtray that looked more like a piece of junk that I'd made in kindergarten as a Father's Day gift. My father doesn't even smoke but he's kept it sitting in a place of honor on the coffee table in the den all these years. I swear that thing's worth more to him than all the gold in Fort Knox.

And then there's the cookbook book I crafted out of construction paper decorated with crayon scribbles and tied together with yarn that included recipes I'd clipped out of magazines I'd made for my mother's birthday. She claimed it was the best gift she'd ever gotten, and it must be because she does use it occasionally when my father isn't doing the cooking which he is known to do.

My parents have a lot of incriminating material on me. They could blackmail me if they wanted to.

And please don't think I'm complaining because I'm not. I think my parents are the best in the world.

I used to think being the son of an well-known Academy award winning actor and a respected journalist and successful writer was a bad thing. People used to say, "you're Malan and Lathal Hamel's kid, aren't you?" like there was something wrong with that and there wasn't.

Actually, I know I'm lucky. I was brought up by two very loving parents. Not too many people can say that especially with today's dysfunctional families, where a family member might be related to a child. in multiple ways.

Growing up I always wanted to have a relationship like theirs. We knew they'd be together forever. They weren't like many modern couples who went to Vegas, married and divorced an hour later. They had a history together and a commitment to each other, and they weren't going to throw it all away because they couldn't make it work.

Malan and Lathal Hamel had been married for 27 years and were still going strong. That's what I always most admired about them. They kept their romance alive through good times and bad. They didn't try to hide their feelings for one another. They shared it with us.

We knew what love was. We could see it in their eyes and on their faces. We knew in the way they touched and kissed and we too wanted a love that was real and true.

But my parents aren't the ones constantly trying to humiliate me by showing pictures of my bizarre childhood and awkward adolescents and my feeble attempts at creativity to everyone who walks into the house.

That would be my sister, Maureen Marie Hamel.

You're probably wondering why I let my baby sister pick on me that way. And I'm sure you're going to tell me I only have myself to blame if I give my sister that kind of power over me.

Before you go about getting the wrong impression, let me tell you I've harassed my sister as many times as she's harassed me.

Maureen had absolutely no control over me. I'm not going to let a girl have her way with me. No siree, Bob.

Maureen and I are just like any other siblings you know. We've had our share of sibling rivalry. We've had our knock down drag out fights but after the war is over, we shake hands, promising we'll get the other one next time, but we've always been good friend.

When you're the youngest one in the family like Maureen is, you have a tendency to be a bit of a clown. And I can make that case because my aunt Bianca, the youngest of the Harvey sisters, is exactly the same way.

They say it's all in the family, but I can't recall anyone quite like Maureen. She was so full of life. She had incredible energy and spunk. She was intelligent and funny. She liked to laugh and play and never said no to a challenge. She loved to be footloose and fancy free and it seemed like she didn't have any cares in the world.

She wanted to explore the world. She'd try anything once and wasn't afraid of taking chances.

She dreamed of someday becoming the top international female race car driver.

I'd look at her, and I swear it was looking at my mother standing there. I suppose some genetic resemblance is natural but the similarities are uncanny.

She had fair skin, a slim figure and many of the same features my mom has including the flowing golden hair, sparkling bluish-green eyes and warm smile.

They also had the same loving, giving personality. Maureen was independent and determined. A girl with dreams and goals. I imagine Mom had as much spirit and sass as Maureen had in her younger day.

Come to think about it whenever I think about Maureen I always remember her this way. The wisps of her hair swirling on a breeze, the light rouge coloring on her cheeks and the mischievous gleam in her eyes reflected her vibrance and life. Her fresh, clean, pure, features emphasized her innocence and youth. Her fine sculpted eyebrows piqued in wry amusement gave her a hint of invisibility.

She was not the lifeless, two-dimensional character I saw in the image surrounded by tiny pebbles that was mounted beneath a cooper plate that bore her vital information on the rocky slate gray surface.

Clutching the crimson rose in my hand, I thought about how the flower was a favorite for both my mother and Maureen. If the girl were here, she'd bat her long eyelashes, working her feminine wiles on me and every guy in the place, until she got the flower.

But Maureen was not here.

I shook my head, trying to figure out what was happening around me. There wasn't a mass of people, clad in black, gathered here, whispering their sympathies and condolences to my mourning parents.

I was in denial. This wasn't something I could just accept.

I was really too small to understand, but I know I was mad at them. They were my mommy and daddy; I didn't want to share them with anyone.

Why did they have to have another baby? I mean, they had me. Wasn't I good enough for them?

Mommy, daddy and me, we were one big happy family. They didn't need another stinking baby.

I don't like change, so every chance I had I told them that I wasn't happy about the little bombshell they'd dropped on me. I was satisfied with the way things were. I had everything I needed.

And now all I wanted was to have her back.

She was gone. She was never coming back.

Even as I stand here at her funeral on this crisp, cool November morning, I still don't believe it.

It didn't seem real to me. How could it be? I mean it all had to be a bad dream. That was the only explanation for it.

Otherwise Maureen Marie Hamel would here, celebrating her 17th birthday, not lying in some grave.

A few days ago Maureen went to a birthday party thrown by one of her friends. After dropping off her friends, she was on her way home when a drunk driver collided head on into her vehicle, instantly killing Maureen.

They say real men don't cry, but that's a lie. I saw the tears my father cried while holding my sobbing mother in his arms.

Tears also stung my eyes as the priest from Our Lady of the Woods Catholic Church that our family had known for years slowly closed his prayer book after reciting the final prayers. He came over and laid a sympathetic hand on my mother's elbow, his sad glazed gaze swept over the graveside marked in fall colors.

The services had concluded and mourners silently started filing to their cars, leaving my parents standing there, staring at their daughter's grave in disbelief.

Can you blame them? Even I didn't know what to do or where to be. I was torn between huddling next to them and crying until the tears no longer flowed or being his own man and facing it on my own.

The pain I stood there for a long time. Somehow I found the strength to move the few steps toward my sister's grave. I didn't try to hide the anguish and pain that lie in the depths of my soul. Tears streamed down my cheeks as I lay the crimson rose along the ledge on the bottom of my sister's gravestone.

The words carved on the slate gray stone nestled in a quiet shady plot beneath the willow tree in Memory Gardens stated the God awful truth like a cruel joke.

Maureen Marie Hamel

Beloved daughter, sister and friend