Death, Grief, & The Path We Walk
The acknowledgment of death plays a large roll in my work. The pieces themselves don’t necessarily manifest as representations of the direct idea, but it is something that is constantly present with me in the studio. When I think of mortality I also think of erosion. Arm in arm with this idea is the way our mental landscape is subject to erosion; and memories of past loved ones become less and less detailed.
Here, I have collected some thoughts on the idea of death, grief, and the way these things affect the way we see the world around us.
1) The cycles of grief, much like the cycle of life are not as linear as some think. These emotional loops have rhythm and patterns. In connection, our lives have interwoven circles and patterns that repeat and resurface, just as seasons cycle around us and natural events collide with our normal lives.
2) Our perceptions of our own reality create the lives that we are living. This is something that I have been familiar with for some time. Reading about how the ways that death affect our lives, no matter how universal, is an extremely personal action. Again, perception leads us to our own paths. Just because someone has walked a path in their own life doesn’t mean that their experience will translate to someone else starting the same journey, no matter how similar. Other people in our lives can be there for moral support, but the path of our lives must be walked by ourselves.
This means that the path we take can sometimes be a lonely one. It does not mean we must face it alone, but rather that we are the ones that fully face our own existence in reality.
3) Despite the wish for something to relieve us from our grief, there is little that stop the feelings from crashing into our lives. Like a mountain range rising out of the landscape. These feelings can be pushed up when we are not expecting it. It is very common for grief to lay just below the surface of our personal landscape to erupt unexpectedly. Some of these events are spurred on by outside stimuli while other times they are just random and sporadic events. Even mountains are caused by internal tension.
4) Loss is something so strange because it comes in and drastically changes our realities. One moment everything is normal, the next; the construction of life is being questioned. We live in and around life. We are surrounded by a world that is defined by the way that we understand our interactions with it. (Those interactions being done by someone who is alive). No matter how aware of death we are, when we are confronted by it, it shakes our reality. Our loved ones are not forgotten, but they are not at the grocery store or in the quotidian elements of our lives. Yet, it is often in those quotidian and mundane things that can hold the power to make us face the reality of the loss. A coffee cup summons a thought or flashback, because it looks just like one that was owned by a passed loved one. A fresh piece of produce reminds us of gardening with the person that has been taken away from us. These feelings and memories can rush back and own moments of our lives that originally had nothing to do with the departed. Sometimes there is a trigger item and sometimes there is no trigger at all. This is not only how the departed live on through us, it is also the stain of time; time we’ve spent with the departed, time we have been away from them. On the tapestry of our lives are marks and stains made by the people we have interacted with. Their life stains our own and we carry them with us.
5) Our reality is constantly shifting under us. If you have ever been ice fishing, you might know what it feels like to have the ice move under your feet. It is a feeling that I can hardly forget. The ice itself is already a questionable host. No matter how thick it is, I always question its stability. Because the ice is floating on top of the water it is solid while still being subject to the movement of a liquid. When a wave from a boat that is out on the open water creates a ripple, it still travels all the way back to shore. By the time the ice movement is felt one could look out to the open channel to see no boat, but just how events reverberate throughout our lives the boat is long gone by the time the wave moves the ice under our feet. In grief, our lives are the ice. We think that things are stable, and we carry on through this false truth. Despite our trust in the stability of the ice below us something can still come in and shake our truth.