Loss

I am thinking about loss right now, having just experienced a painful loss. Doing a Google search, of photographs that deal with loss immediately spawned images of mens hair loss. Go figure. I then thought about one of my favorite photographers, Robert Frank. Of all of the iconic images Frank has made dealing with loss, this one stuck with me, punches me in the gut saying: this is what it is, neither positive nor negative, it just is. For me there is a tension in this photo that goes beyond what words can describe.












©Robert Frank


I find this image also ties in with something that Colleen Mullins is experiencing this week, however in probably a more somber way. For words and images that deal with the deep blue sea and what it invokes for her, check out FiveYearsAtSea.

I read A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis before I ever had a reason to do so. Now that I do I take comfort in his opening paragraph, which launches the tone of the book in the most poetic and visceral of ways:

"No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing."