Births & deaths
I meet him as an old man in a chair
A small blanket covering his legs
Our conversation is brief
He apologises for not being able to get up and say goodbye properly
And then we leave a little while later
My boyfriend’s uncle
The old man in the chair
Today, it’s a few weeks later
Everyone is out doing shopping when we arrive
A hospice notice is tacked to the cabinet near the front door
It hangs in mid-air, where it can’t be missed
It feels like an announcement
This is no ordinary family lunch
Perhaps even the last one.
The dining room table is decorated with cutlery, plates, eats and cakes
I realise we are not the only ones who have come through these doors doing the last respects march
The old man in the chair has been replaced by the metal frame of a hospital bed
A crumpled form lying beneath its sheets
Its unexpected and I’m unprepared
I enter with Grant and we sidle up to the bed to say our hellos when
Quite suddenly this man who I hardly know
Who I only met for a few minutes takes both my hands in his and grasps them tightly
“Hello Rowena,” he says “its so nice to see you”
I have to fight to hold back the tears
He is half the size he was before
His skin is pulled tightly around his skeletal structure
Comforted now only by the bones that lie beneath
But still he holds my hands
Complaining about medicine schedules, bring the next round of pills and ooh yes, don’t forget the morphine
And so, I’m having my hand held by Uncle Binks in a room surrounded by memories and old furniture when suddenly my head is reeling with questions it needs to ask
Or rather answers it must have in order to understand
What does it feel like to be hanging on?
To be waiting to die?
Why doesn’t the body just give up?
I am struck by how the living are so poorly equipped to deal with death
I realise, I too one day, will be a sibling like his brother next to me watching life loosening its grip on one of my sisters
All I want to do is get out my camera and somehow document what’s happening because it’s all so raw and so real
Funnily enough, Uncle Binks has a few tricks up his sleeve
He perks up a bit and sips his medicines
And despite the hollow colour of his cheeks, his hair is curly and alive. Full of energy!
I watch him and find comfort in his ability to laugh at himself
He notices a cupboard that was next to him is missing
He could have sworn it was there a few days ago
He tells me stories of crabs in the house and shopping with his wife until I am laughing out load
By now the gang has arrived bringing with them the noise of lives that are just beginning
I am touched by the generosity of a family I am just starting to get to know
They let me take photos of what remains of their little family and give me a box of old photos so that I may immortalise all they have left
On our way out, I sneak into the lounge to say goodbye
Uncle Binks is curled up on his side
In front of him the wall is decorated with beautiful old black and white photographs
All the lives that have come before him
Outside I hear the chatter of all those that will come after
It’s safe and warm in there with him and I think to myself that this is how I’d like to go one day
Surrounded by people that love me in the faint afterglow of the afternoon sun
so here we go…
PEOPLE ARE NUTS IF THEY THINK THEY ARE IMPORTANT – jenny holzer
this is pretty much the opinion i have had of bloggers, tweeters, status updates and whatever else there is out there to PROMOTE myself, EXPLAIN myself, blavatar or gravatar myself. i mean is this stuff really all necessary? but here i am anyway, spilling my guts. in public…
i am treating this as a learning exercise. while i am learning computer, its teaching me about me. it came to me only yesterday. i spend nearly all my time with my computer, it’s the first thing i say hello to in the morning and when i turn it off at night its like announcing, “ok i am off to bed”. so yesterday afternoon, the sun was just beginning to go down, and i think i just suddenly longed for some “human” company. obviously, i am chatting on facebook, checking the news feed, someone is WhatsApping at the same time so i am torn – much to my agitation – between screen and phone, screen and phone, until i eventually realised i have to get with the program here. this phone, this computer, this facetime, well that is how we interact now. this piece of machine is my friend.
its funny, because i have a friend who gets on better with me when we are on the phone. when we actually see each other and have to be in each other’s physical presence we both get a little jumpy. i suppose our machines keep us safe.
my computer is filled with all sorts of things that would help explain what type of person i am. Yet, when i started this blog, i suddenly panicked – who am i, what am i trying to say, who do i want to be? the last question is quite scary for me because then you can’t really know anyone… at all. so i picked about 7 different me’s from all my photos and finally got down to the nitty-gritty with myself – hence my blavatar pic on the left. that’s me today – in charge. lets see what happens tomorrow…
the rest is apparently easy. i write stuff here, somehow it’s what you actually find interesting, then you follow me and put likes up all over my site and then i do this to someone else and then and then and then tell me, what happens after that?
in the meantime i am to keep myself entertained and educated with all my cleverness as i navigate my way through wordpress. and while this is happening i will be discovering and divulging all the bits that make up my life. so this site is really like the”back of my cupboard”. it is my treasure chest, full of little pieces of me. there’s a little bit of adventure and distant places, a bit of tragedy and heartache, growing up and a whole lot of soul-searching.
but what is life without identifying?! and amazingly in all this stuff on me we’re going find there are some pieces of you too.
my need to see me through this abstract mirror allows me much-needed reflection, i get to observe myself living. and for those of us as blissfully self-unaware as me, it does not hurt to see how we come across to others. its my compass for truth.
because you see, ultimately i always land up back in the same place at the end, and it’s always where i originally started — “i am going to make a blog of my work so people can see my pictures”. and my pictures are of things i like. i have tried to capture things that make me feel something, that make me go inwards so i can get in touch with me, the real me. stolen moments, open spaces and people who have altered my landscape in some way.
in fact i think it will become my life’s work. i am what i do.
me at age 6. i was born impatient
the good the true and the beautiful 