A MOMENT OF NON-EXISTENCE: OF PEACE
In honor of Terrance Patrick Frank
An assignment in a photography class and a short story as a few ways to immortalize my grandfather. Not the story of his life, not his favorite food or any such tidbits and aspects, but a way to capture the spirit of him.
AS HE DOES; MIND WANDERING TOWARDS SHOOTING STARS
About a hundred years ago, my grandfather learned there was no bottom of his lake. We were sitting on the moss-eaten dock, his furry toes breaking the whitecaps before they engulfed the shore between. Our afternoons dreamed of times like these, beyond his home with the single-pipe outdoor shower and the porch swing he rocked me on over sunsets of my childhood, us in our swimsuits reclining on hands against the splintered wooden dock, his furry toes breaking the whitecaps.
My reflection
Wire sculpture, crystal beads, tissue paper, rosemary, ice skate laces
THE MOMENT THERE WAS NO BOTTOM; NO NOTHING JUST EVERYTHING
This afternoon, however, the man larger than life itself, 28 because that was the best year of his life; my grandfather was telling me of the time he learned there was no bottom of his lake. He’d walked these shores from his hands and his knees, from the time he was the idea of his self in vitro. By his sixteenth summer on his lake, he could walk the breakwater in the dark, muscle memory alone guiding him. He’d begun by this time to go for night swims, after developing the insomnia that captures the mentally distraught--creeping in the barricades weakened by their avoidance, through their cracks.
Reflection
wire sculpture, selenite tower, beads
& THOUGHT I DIED
-kid, he said gruffly, eyes still staring intensely through the waves, flickering up at me in the winks of the sun on the dimples of the surface. You ever been out at night and seen more shootin stars than regular?
My mind sees the air around me begin to weigh with the heavy dew of august nights, this one laying on a trampoline layered with comforters and throw pillows of her younger sister’s, further out of the mini metropolis i usually resided. We’d counted plenty--15 for me alone, but the power of suggestion is a strong one. By then we’d decided to one day get a shooting star tattoo, keep going, these nights, and i’m still going and i’m stilling waiting; with the twinkle in his eye he shared with me, i looked at fragments of his eyes in the water and i replied
-it made me believe in more. Yeah.
-i followed one. Back when i could swim across the lake every witches hour.
Our toes broke the surface of the waves and his eyes wouldn’t make eye contact dancing all over the kisses of the sun rays but it was his voice that floated over and said:
-i always started my swim walking out over the breakwaters, the rocks were from the cliffs so my feet were calloused on the bottom, and my body could do everything for me. It was the only time i could hear. Really hear, all the stars twinkling above and the dew drops forming on the leaves of all these damn aspen and oaks, the moon singin out to the tide. My mind went quiet with the world around it and thank god for that. My eyes heard the star fall from the sky, first it was a shooting star but soon i saw an orb jumping around the lake, rings wavering out around it’s impact, venn diagrams colliding and i swear i saw a lily pad bloom. But kid i told you my body had woken up so it took me to the star, no space for my thoughts to argue--it wasn’t their time or place. This time my feet did their job like never before, taking me across the tension of the water to dance with the star, the first time i danced if you now think about it. I can’t say i love anything more than dancing with your grandmother but if not for this fallen twinkle i never would have learned to dance. Almost like a piece of what may be came down, thought maybe i was missing something. But kid, that’s not what right now is about, you’re thinking about up and what’s out there when you have to hear about the lake.
We was dancing but the star showed me how to exist, to experience, the star tugged my fingers and all of my toes and we were underwater. I know you’re a smart one, all those definitions and all so i looked it up earlier and synonyms for bottom are base and foundation, ground, and we’ll assume that means one complete whole uninterrupted bottom. This one isn’t; there’s a place where there’s nothin, there’s just everything. There’s then and now and the thoughts of whomever but never yourself, maybe yourself but how would you decipher, there’s your aunt pam’s recipe and there’s the father teaching his son not how to be masculine but how to know himself and there’s a gravestone tall above the rest. There’s somewhere that goes everywhere but it’s all here, thoughts and their feelings and all of the meanings and prayers, you can’t know if he is you or her, or if you are them both, you can’t hear your thoughts or remember your breakfast or birthday. There’s a hole you get so lost in; there’s nothing.
My reflection
Crystals, fabric, ashes in a bottle, selenite tower, he’s wrapped in a necklace
AS THE SUN SETS
Correspondence
Reflection
Bay leaves, cinnamon, selenite & quartz, wire, pendulum
TO THE WATERFALL
Correspondance
Reflection
wire, rosemary, mustache hair in a jar, desert rose, selenite, cinnamon, pendulum
I was assigned a project to make a series of sun prints inspired by prompts such as: Describe Yourself! What Is A Good Memory? Things along those lines. I chose to use a short story written a few months earlier when I was home on break as inspiration. It seemed fitting, inspired by the impact my grandfather had upon me as I visited with him, a way to cope with his Stage VI lung cancer and chemotherapy. I had chosen it because I liked the imagery I wrote about, and it was easy because it was imagery of places I’d been countless times before. I didn’t expect working through this process to lead me through the process of grieving his passing nearly six months later.
When I was younger, a lot of people I loved died when I was in first grade, and I just remember crying a lot—and that I got over it and moved on. Eventually that turned into some weird phobia about not having feelings because I don’t constantly remember them and I’m not sad long enough. Even when I know that they have died and I cannot do anything other than know I’m okay, I still am so fearful that I am Broken because I don’t care Enough.
But when I was looking at the story for image inspiration, it reminded me of a swim team practice years ago. In an underground, basement pool, I tightened my streamline as I finished my breaststroke kick, closing my mouth as I dove back under the surface. Entirely underwater, every light shut off, and the first thought that crossed my mind was that I somehow died. Remembering that while I revisited this piece suddenly made me more interested in the focus on grandpa’s experience underwater, in the dark, certainly a euphemism for death at least. I realized that to me, death was quiet. As I glided through the water, silent and submerged, I felt more intrigued by the sense of peace than fearful.
I originally wrote this story during a time when I saw my grandpa going through chemo, feeling as if he was already dead when I sat with him. I thought about the peace of my moments underwater, the paralleled peace of the hole in the bottom of the lake. The sense of peace I experienced must have taken up space within me, something I keep subconsciously. Writing this story, I began a journey to see that I’ve always known they have returned to and become nothingeverything. It showed me that it’s okay to exist in a space of nothingeverything when grieving. Being so sad and being okay with “feeling nothing”—isn’t it okay to exist in the peaceful space of nothingeverything wit them?
I also feel that this has become a way for me to immortalize the essence of my grandfather. The way he made you feel around him. The things I’ve learned because of him, messages that impacted me. I hope the experience of seeing these images and reading the story, allows you to know a life with him in it, on a different level than laughing about his Thanksgiving prayer or his ticket from racing a motorcycle on a sidewalk.
Raise hell.