Kintsukuroi,
‘to repair with gold’, is the Japenese
art of repairing shattered pottery and ceramic vessels with gold and
silver, understanding that the piece is more beautiful for having been
broken.
I had loved this practice long
before it would resonate fully in my own life.
But instead of gold, I would use the gift of light, both physically and
spiritually, to mend and bring beauty to all my broken places.
The word photography comes from the Greek word phos, meaning light, and graphos, meaning writing ... so loosely translates to 'writing with light'. How beautiful. Writing with light. Thats what I do. Although formerly trained in Fine Art and
Illustration, I understand myself as an artist that takes photos to frame the intuitive language of my
soul.
Looking back to the months before life as I knew it would change forever, I now strongly believe that on some subconscious,
perhaps spiritual level, we know, or are prepared for a death or parting of a
loved one. If only we knew to pay attention to the signs. But more of this I'll leave for another blog.
She’d wanted
to try on my ring, and it had slipped on easily enough, like a new marriage. But
it soon became evident of a bad fit, becoming impossibly stuck and constricting
the blood flow in the finger, turning purple and distressingly swollen. All attempts would fail to remove the band,
and in desperation and panic, my husband David, took a tool from his garage and
snipped at the shiny silver band, which sprung apart bringing instant relief to my
daughters finger. Holding it up, the circle now broken, I remember a
fleeting thought: this isn’t a good sign. And I think I might even have said
it out loud, and we’d laughed. But I’m
not superstitious like that. And, without another thought, had slipped my
wedding ring back on my finger where it belonged.
That was
three months before the accident that ended Davids life and the future he had worked hard for and we were planning
to transition too, now that our children, young adults, were coming into their
own independence.
I was born
and raised in Africa with a deep love for the wide open spaces and big sky of
this beautiful continent. And the same ancient heartbeat that pulses through
every living cell of all her flora and fauna, and of which I’m so proud to
belong, synchronizes my own rhythms of life. So it’s not surprising, that like
her gentle giants the elephants, that traverse ancestral pathways regardless of
boundaries, I identify with their peculiar and hauntingly familiar approach to
grief. They visit and revisit the
skeletal remains of their departed, their mammoth spirits now inhabiting the
wind, leaving only their bones to bleach white under the baking African sun.
With silent reverence they tenderly caress and turn over their memories, to lay
them back down on the blood red earth, before they journey on.
And so it is
with my own journey through this unfamiliar landscape of grief.
For a moment
that lasted months I was plunged into a darkness so profound, it threatened to
swallow my light. My body and head seemed to know what to do, but my spirit was
adrift in a dark unfathomable sea of sorrow.
I
tried to ignore the sweetness of the light in it’s attempt to seduce me out of
my sadness. But even though my world had changed forever, I couldn’t help notice that the way I saw things hadn’t. I still saw beauty
everywhere, and I was very relieved, for I had feared I would never trip on
light again.
Now, often lost
for words to adequately describe the depth and breadth of this abyss,
photography became more than ever before, my means of expression. Constantly challenged to understand how light
works, and losing myself in the wonder of it all is where I find peace and healing. The process has become the moments of my future that I would get
through, one picture at a time. The light would save my life.
I would use it to bring into focus my fractured
thoughts, determined to bring beauty to my brokenness and to write my story in light.
And so on
and so forth, I look to love and grace, new every day, to fall like light at my
feet as I feel my way forward one photograph at a time.
Maybe understanding
that we are at once both fragile and immeasurably strong and resilient, and finding a way to mend, sacredly and with grace and purpose, is what
makes brokenness beautiful.
For those who, like me, are
living in the shadow of grief, I don’t presume to have the answer on how to
heal. I only know where I find comfort and what helps me build a bridge from this moment to the next. One book at a time,
one plant at a time, one stitch at a time, one song at a time, one painting at a
time. It's different for everyone. But these are the gifts.
I miss
David.
But it's my hope that my photographs give
not only expression of my grief at the enormity of this loss, but of the beautiful light
that he lit when he left. x
footnote: I'm thrilled that a version of this story is featured in Cake&Whiskey magazine. www.cakenwhiskey.com
