Death surrounds me.
It always has.
I grew up as a pathologist... like my dad.
He tucked me into bed with the story of his latest autopsy.
That was my bedtime story.
And I, too, grew up to tell my kids autopsy stories - usually during driver's ed.
But death has never been so personal to me.
In the 10 days since my Dad's death, it feels more personal when I'm called to investigate a death.
I can feel the family's pain - the loss - the sorrow.
To clear my head, I visit The Land.
The Land always brings me peace and joy.
Last week they were begging for food.
Only one baby bird is left.
I take several pictures before I realize - he is not moving.
My baby bluebird is dead.
I walk The Land.
There is no joy - the flowers of spring have passed.
The sky is a dull flat blue - no puffy clouds, no play of light on blossoms.
Head down, I drive back to see my family in Fishers.
I'm sure they didn't mean to let my flowers die.
But there in the center of our table stand dead tulips - sent in memory of my dear father.
How can I shake this off - this feeling that death is all around me?
Friday I bike.
I visit Frank.
I come home.
KC is waiting for me with pictures of the latest event at Brixton.
The visit of vultures.
What can I do?
3 comments:
There is a quote my juniors stumble across every year that goes something like, "Death is the mother of beauty". I've always taken it to mean that without death, without the dark, there is no life, no light. The tulips are only lovely because they are temporal. Who likes silk flowers?
Norma used to always hang and dry the cut flowers I would give her. I would come home and my beautiful bouquet that had lasted barely a week would be hung by the door like some vulture. I thought it was sort of morbidly funny. The hung flowers became the inspiration (I think)of her last piece.
What should you do? Get TJ to shoot his arrows at the vultures, hang the tulips to dry, cut some fresh flowers, quit your job and run for mayor of New Castle!
yay the dead blog =) i helped =P still makes me sad about the baby blue bird tho!
Actually I thought the dead tulips were photogenic.
Norma's art has inspired a lot of my nature photography.
She asked to see buds this spring and I've made a point of photographing buds a lot.
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