Here, There and Everywhere
Grief is a permanent tattoo. It can fade a little with time, or deepen, but it remains. It can change resonance, morphing its shape, color and tone, but it is for a lifetime.
In 2016, my husband died unexpectedly, and a year later, I lost both my mother and my sister in one month’s time. Loss laid waste to me. Grief made a constant keening in my bones, with a single refrain - Where did they go? It seemed that they were just beyond my vision and I strove to find them, to bring them home, to me. When I picked up a camera, I was only able to photograph the distant horizon. I was searching, out there, somewhere else, for them.
Gradually, the exquisite pain began to quiet into a thrum, and in that quiet, I listened. And in the listening, I found them. First, they appeared in the sounds of leaf rustle or the rain ticking against a windshield. Then, I saw them in a slant of light at the window, in the swish of a cat’s tail, or in the rain on the dogwood tree.
They are there, and here, and everywhere. I am comforted by the beauty of their presence. These images are a testament to those I glimpse in a bit of light.
