The final photograph of my brother is mostly his thumb

Dear Delyara, My brother died suddenly from an aneurysm. His phone was returned to us after the police finished with it. The final photograph he took is mostly his thumb covering the camera. You can see a corner of blue sky, part of a tree, and this huge blurry pink shape. It is useless. I love it. Everyone wanted photographs from his final day, hoping perhaps there would be something meaningful: a sunset, his children, one last smiling selfie. Instead, we got evidence that he accidentally pressed the camera while putting his phone away. That feels more like life to me. He did not know he was living a final day. He was not curating it for our grief. He was probably trying to unlock the screen while walking. My mother finds the picture upsetting because it contains nothing of him. I see his thumb and think, That was his hand. Alive, warm, irritatingly in the way, doing something completely unimportant. I have printed it. Nobody understands why. I do not need death to make everything beautiful. Sometimes I need proof that my brother was alive enough to take a terrible photograph.