Clearances

Taking a moment from our modeling shoot, yoga instructor Kim Vareika interacted with my Irish photograph, "Clearances".  Kim owns Vareika Personal Training and Yoga and is kind to host some of my work in her studio.
https://www.vareikapersonaltraining.com/

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Clearances
36 x 24”


"When all the others were away at Mass
I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.
They broke the silence, let fall one by one
Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:
Cold comforts set between us, things to share
Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.
And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes
From each other's work would bring us to our senses."


~Seamus Heaney, excerpt from Clearances


With the linoleum floor as the backdrop to my shoes and the percussion of small talk, utensils, pots and pans as the soundscape, I remember helping my mom in the kitchen with the family meals.


It has been a few years since my mother passed. At my mother’s memorial, I heard many versions of that old platitude, “Time heals all wounds.” Experience has taught me that time doesn’t offer a linear healing process so much as a slowly shifting perspective.


She died from suffering. In many ways, my mom and I share similar temperaments. After her death, I worried I was also destined for an unhappy outcome. This is one of the many tricks that grief plays: it makes you think you don’t deserve happiness. Grief makes us better equipped to weather the other life losses that are sure to come and personally, I have weathered a few. 


Death is the only universal, and grieving makes beginners out of all of us.

Where to begin . . .