“we are carried.
in bellies. in arms.
in love. in hope.
in caskets. in urns.
in grief. in memories.
our whole lives
and into the next
we are carried.”
-Sarah Rian
There is no love without grief just as there is no life without death. We cannot escape this fundamental aspect of the human condition, we can only practice ways of carrying & nurturing our grief so that we are not debilitated by it when the weight of it becomes more than we think we can bear. There are moments in life when we are so caught up in the joy of living and loving that grief feels weightless and we forget it even exists. Other times grief clings to the skin, hot and thick, like a wool blanket drenched in muddy water seemingly flung out of nowhere. Believe me when I say that even this manifestation of grief is beautiful. To grieve is to savor. To worship. To be open to the whole experience of being human. It is a form of reverence for the sacredness of life that keeps us tethered like an umbilical cord allowing us to feel connection when connection seems impossible.
Grief quite literally is love, and it does not wait for a great loss to present itself. It finds you in the quiet, seeping into the most ordinary moments. For it is the weaving of those ordinary moments that makes up the fabric of our existence and ties us to each other. Patches of the ordinary in the extraordinary quilt of life (yes, I have seen How to Make an American Quilt). I believe it is important to open to the experience of grieving and become sensitive to all of the ways it shows up in our lives. If I had to identify a single thread that pulses through the heartbeat of all of my work, grief would be that thread. Grieving childhood, a sense of home, the passing of gorgeous moments as they slip away before our very eyes. I suppose this is how I came to be a photographer in the first place.
Recently I wrote about watching the sunset each day as a form turning towards transformation and loss and grief. I don’t remember if I used those exact words but this was certainly at the heart of the writing. When I say we must practice nurturing our grief, this is what I mean. Through gratitude, we honor the light for as long as it is here to kiss our toes. And as what we call day fades into night, we shift with it to honor the expanse of stars unveiled by the dying of the light. (Seriously, as my dear frientor Anderson Wrangle would says: stars are cool as shit looking!) But we know that the "dying" of the light isn't true death- the sun will rise again in the morning. This is the cycle of birth and death and rebirth, on and on and on.
Grief is actually a gift, and it is in this spirit that I shift my focus to honor some of the other gifts my mother gave me.
a short list:
a deep admiration of animals
unflappable love & support (of all the things I have questioned in my time here, I have never questioned whether she loves me and she never questioned my desire to be an artist or my requests to have her pose for much of the work I have made)
alcoholism & mental illness (my greatest teachers)
blood connections to people who get it
a gift for teaching
a "dance-like-everyone-else-can-go-to-hell" attitude
countless absurd stories that will make you belly laugh
& so much more that I haven't the time to name & even more that I have yet to discover
Many of her gifts were unconventional. They were not wrapped neatly & adorned with a pretty bow. They were often gritty & raw, not always easily identifiable as gifts in the moment, but over time revealing themselves as rare treasures that have exponentially expanded my understanding of the human condition. Among these gifts and perhaps the most important, without which the others would not exist, this body made from hers. A vessel to carry me when she no longer could.
[I hereby acknowledge that my father also played a role in the giving of this gift, but I do not care to think too much about the ins & outs of that whole process.]
All of these gifts have made me a more compassionate person, less afraid to confront fear, more eager to take care of my body, to find joy (especially through humor) in all of the deep corners of myself & this strange world. She has given me the gift of this particular life and I imagine it will take the whole damn thing to understand what that means, should I ever come to such understanding.
The hard truth is, no matter how you spin it, it is painful to watch your mother become less of herself with each passing day, struggling for breath not knowing which one will be her last. Despite the dragging nature of each day since her stroke 10 days ago, her decline has seemed rapid. But do I really remember a time when she wasn't suffering one way or another? How long have we been living in fear that the next illness or surgery or minor inconvenience might be the one that does her in? Certainly I can recall moments of joy, but her life has been a glaring reminder of the first of the Four Noble Truths: Life is suffering. The questions that usually follow this assertion are: Why? What is the point?
I can't speak to the whole picture, for I am merely a single human floating on a ball of dust in a universe greater than my monkey brain can fathom, but I do know that we are here to help heal each other. I like to think about the High Priestess (related to the story of Persephone), who is taken into the underworld against her will but finds her way out by engaging in the realm of intuition. By living this traumatic experience, she is able to use the wisdom gained from that experience to teach and serve others. There are countless archetypes and deities throughout human mythologies and histories that echo this concept. And so, when the truth gets too hard or too heavy, I try to land in this place of remembering in the spirit of service:
“Perfer et obdura, dolor hic tibi proderit olim.
(Be patient and tough; someday this pain will be useful to you.)”
-Ovid
I leave you with a reference to my favorite scene from my favorite movie (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button). Some of my friends will laugh at this, some of them might roll their eyes, but none of them will be surprised.
As Thomas Button reveals to Benjamin that he is his biological father, apologizes for abandoning him as a newborn & escorts him around his estate, they come to an old family photograph that helps set the stage for one of the most profound moments in cinematic history (according to me):
“Your grandfather at the summer
house on Lake Pontchartrain. When
I was a boy I would love to wake
up before anybody else and run
down to the lake to watch the day
begin. It was as if I was the only
one alive.”
Later, as his father is dying, Benjamin literally carries him out to the lake, positioning him on the pier in such a way that he could return to that feeling he recalled having as a child.
I loved your mother and I know that she loved me. The Possum Queen had a heart as big as she was. I believe that you inherited a lot of creativity from her. Wendy was a genius in inspiring others and so are you.