Two Months and Two Days

No one warned me about the growing emptiness I would endure two months and two days after my brother's death. Perhaps only fools and cliches think it gets easier everyday. Instead the pain is sharper and experiences more noticeably stale without him. When did the world move on and where did I forget to change gears? My life is no longer dictated to me or defined to others by my brother's cancer and death, and yet this heavy ghost lingers, reminding me 10,000 times a day that he is gone. He is gone. The words never stop taking my breath away. It seems the silliest and most trivial things hold my heart hostage the most; finally seeing a movie we excitedly watched previews of together, wanting to text him about the ultra-conservative 'merica testimony I heard at church, listening to songs from his life's soundtrack, and oddly even the sound of someone puking. Everyday I'm reminded how much of our intricate relationship I took for granted and the holes left that will forever remain unfilled. He is gone.

Maybe the starkness of "gone" isn't a fair description. Alex is eternally around. I feel his personality and spiritual influence almost daily in my life, and one day I know I will physically see him again. But gone are the experiences of this life's unique tangibility and imperfection... something I desperately mourn. These days I often find myself pushing through photo albums of Alex, cherishing each idiosyncratic facial feature and the fleeting moments they were born from. What can be more precious and painful than these images?

Being able to document Alex's final days is the greatest photographic calling I've ever had, and it completely changed the way I view my craft. They don't come anywhere close to the most technically sound images I've created, so many being simple snapshots, but they are the most important images I've captured in my life so far. Never have any of my days been so hallowed as then, and never have I been so thankful to have these images to cling to as now. These photographs are the only things that sometimes, albeit brief, make him feel not so gone.

 

 

It is said certain aboriginal tribes across the world fear (or have feared) photography because they believe it steals one's soul. I sure hope so, because that's all we've got.

peace,
k.