Grandad: June 2011 VS June 2012.
2011. His last summer with us.
And then in 2012.
After an amazing week in London with my friends doing and making our photography exhibition happening, I was heading back home, to Latvia. I was scared of how it's gonna be without him there. Those emotions I will have to feel and grasp, and experience - I didn't want them.
I noticed him everywhere, in every small detail around house. Not just in the things, but... Even in the light what reminded me of him, some paths at home where he used to walk back and worth now was green. And the bricks in front of the house, only now I realized how much he had done at home (as I lived away and did not go home often, stayed unnoticed), had weed growing inbetween. It felt like in books I had read about houses when a family leaves and everything grows apart. The summer evening sound reminded me of him, too. Everything. As much as I loved the feeling to be at home with granny, the same much I tried to escape home that summer.
The first midsummer without our midsummer king.
It just felt empty. He had built the midsummer campfire bucket and the Swedish fire log a year before, he just knew it. He knew that everything was for the last time before I had accepted it. When I usually arrived back home from studies abroad, home he was the one always waiting for me or preparing special surprise cuisine for my return home. You know how are father and daughter relationships, they are tight, and every girl needs to feel like a little princess from their fathers. I had it, but I never had noticed it's him. Always thinking and hoping for a father, when he was just there all this time besides me. As it's always is - you notice what you had only when it's taken from you.
Behind the camera, I felt safe. I was photographing everything - garden, light, flowers, trees, grass, our dog, garbage, sunsets, leaves, house, etc, everything. Somehow I saw him everywhere. When in my room, I noticed after a while how weird it is to not hear his footsteps or his car arriving by the gates. The worst was not hearing his slipper-walk indoors when my room's door was open. Every time I just heard my granny, and my body's memory kept waiting for grandad. While my family already had lived without him for 2 months, to me everything was still like it just had happened yesterday. Looking back now I can see how in denial I was, indulging into activities to just not think, looking for people while I should have been maybe alone for a bit? Constantly looking to fill up the emptiness with something. Yet, the same time I can now see I was in slow motion, in apathy.
Behind the camera, I felt safe. I was photographing everything - garden, light, flowers, trees, grass, our dog, garbage, sunsets, leaves, house, etc, everything. Somehow I saw him everywhere. When in my room, I noticed after a while how weird it is to not hear his footsteps or his car arriving by the gates. The worst was not hearing his slipper-walk indoors when my room's door was open. Every time I just heard my granny, and my body's memory kept waiting for grandad. While my family already had lived without him for 2 months, to me everything was still like it just had happened yesterday. Looking back now I can see how in denial I was, indulging into activities to just not think, looking for people while I should have been maybe alone for a bit? Constantly looking to fill up the emptiness with something. Yet, the same time I can now see I was in slow motion, in apathy.
No one really asked me how am I. It feels like in modern times it's very acceptable "oh, someone died, okay, whatever, let's move along." It was not the fear of death, I was feeling. In fact, I am in an the okay relationship with the meaning of death. What affected me was this short chance to enjoy things, the short moment when someone who shouldn't go yet, just can disappear, can be taken away without really preparing you. Yes, I felt the whole spectrum of grief. Also anger. The five stages of grief. Thinking now in 2019 I might never really reached the last step, I have been hanging somewhere inbetween 4th and 5th... Perhaps with opening up about this... Showing the visual stories... Somehow makes me feel lighter.. Close to closure...
You know, just the feeling someone a bit comforts you, for a moment lets you cry out instead ask you to act together and be strong, because life goes on... I really needed that. My emotional world is not logical, it's sensitive, intense and... emotional, if I hide emotion's, it worsens. Now remembering this time how I felt, then I am not surprised why with these emotions I built the path I did. The lost child in grief, sickening positive thinking and not seeing reality.
If you have anyone going through the loss of a close parent or somebody else, just be for them there, you don't have to say anything to comfornt, just show you are there for them and let them show ALL EMOTIONS they feel. It's important.
A home is not a place, a home can be a person - isn't this so true? It is. I realised that he made me feel home, when he was not there, I didn't feel home anywhere and begun my search for that feeling, like addicted searched for that feeling in other people.
You know, just the feeling someone a bit comforts you, for a moment lets you cry out instead ask you to act together and be strong, because life goes on... I really needed that. My emotional world is not logical, it's sensitive, intense and... emotional, if I hide emotion's, it worsens. Now remembering this time how I felt, then I am not surprised why with these emotions I built the path I did. The lost child in grief, sickening positive thinking and not seeing reality.
If you have anyone going through the loss of a close parent or somebody else, just be for them there, you don't have to say anything to comfornt, just show you are there for them and let them show ALL EMOTIONS they feel. It's important.
A home is not a place, a home can be a person - isn't this so true? It is. I realised that he made me feel home, when he was not there, I didn't feel home anywhere and begun my search for that feeling, like addicted searched for that feeling in other people.
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