The circle that we talk about is not marked or obvious. It just is like the clouds floating by. You can go inside, have a cup of tea and they’re still floating by. That’s us….floating, shaping, changing and disappearing from view only to re-appear again somewhere else.
Last week, I was pondering my wish to have been where I am today when my sisters were born. The primary reason is that I wanted to photograph the first time they opened their eyes, took their first breath and their first bath. This was a selfish wish because taking a picture is a detractor or separation from simply being there, which I was. I was in the hospital room when my sisters were born. I was 9 when Cheyenne was born and 12 when Marley arrived. I remember both events very vividly. So much of me wants to capture and hold on to birth whether it be a flower blooming or a baby being born or that meal that just came from an oven. What’s appealing about photographing death of a human, plant or the rotting of a fruit?
My outlook was wrong.
On Saturday night, I met a woman in her 60s named Alice. She’s the owner of the cabin I’m living in and her son maintains the property doing maintenance and building new additions. Alice has lived in New Hampshire for a long time but has done her fair share of traveling speaking to me about her time in Hawaii and in big cities but how New Hampshire just grows on you and how the seasons are simply incredible, “…but not the snow. The snow kind of sucks.” Alice made me laugh time and again as our friends and neighbors enjoyed the bonfire Sarah & Pat maintained from spare wood and furniture we were getting rid of. I bought a bottle of Coppola Claret wine and it didn’t take much for the affects to hit us. Me with my 15 year Balvenie Scotch and Alice with the Claret, she started telling me stories about death. It was incredible.
Alice told me that she’s been there for over 20 people as they slipped away. I asked, “in your lifetime?” She promptly responded, “in the last 5 years.” She argued that the act of dying can be far more beautiful than birth. maybe it was Alice’s age or maybe she was right but my eternal optimist and my photographic mind loves to capture birth. She seems to have a knack for capturing death..or actually, letting it go. That’s when it hit me.
Holding on versus letting go…
For the physical stuff in my life, I am too often willing to let it go and sometimes for no reason. I give away money, time, electronics and clothes. I give up on friends and relationships to try something new with a clean slate. I make up for that by capturing so much on Flickr, this blog, YouTube and Twitter. I take capturing the moment to another level and have backups for my backups of this data about my life. I spend a lot of time and money trying to preserve my life and the lives of others like my sisters.
Alice has managed to let go in the true sense of the word.
I don’t think she understood that when looking at things from the inside out. When I paused after she revealed the number of people she said, “It’s beautiful to be with someone in their old age…in their home…after a life of success and a brain full of knowledge that you and I will never have and poof it’s gone. It leaves, their spirit moves on and a body is left. It’s absolutely beautiful and an honor to be there for someone holding their hand when it happens.”
I almost cried right there in front of a stranger and said to her. You’re right. Death is a sad time but it’s not. It’s beautiful and relieving. You feel relieved when that person passes. It was their time and they are away to their next adventure. It can be sad but not for them. They aren’t crying. The person who just passed is finally free. They’re more alive now than they ever were before. Death.
wow..that’s something to think about