Week 12 / The Waiting
If you’ve ever lost anyone very dear to you – particularly in a sudden way – you know what it is like to sit waiting for your old life to return. This place is your world between worlds. Your threshold of this life and the afterlife where your loved one is. The edge of the life you were dropped into and the life you had when they were here. Trying to see the past. Wishing to reach it. In grief, we spend many months and even years standing on this threshold… wishing for our old life to return.
I spent much of first year after Drew died in this place… waiting, hoping, begging for his return. Still a part of me doesn’t understand what happened – and waits there. I know this because I continue to have dreams in which my subconscious makes up all number of reasons for why he is not here, trying to process it. No matter how much I embrace this very different but equally beautiful life I was left with, no matter how many beautiful and joyful things have happened in the past two years… still part of me waits. And maybe, I think, a small part of me always will be waiting there for him to return.
About the Series: Through 40 weekly photos and accompanying essays, 'Still, Life' captures a deeply emotional and psychological journey of what it means to grieve, to heal, and to live on.