I was sifting through some photos, looking for shots that I have taken so far and that fit the 113 themes. Running these two projects simultaneously isn’t as challenging as the last three years of a photo-a-day were, and I am more relaxed about them, knowing that I have a week to take each 52 shot, and that the 113 shots just need to be taken in 2013. I am only a little more than a quarter done the 113 though, and the year is already half gone. So I have a folder of things that I go back to and work on when I have some time.
I wasn’t looking for this photo. I knew it was buried in a folder of photos that I have sifted through, some processed, others not. I knew I’d digitally processed it, but I am still, months later, emotionally processing it. I wasn’t out to find it, I wasn’t ready to face it. There are others in the set, still not posted, from that road trip. The others aren’t as emotionally upsetting. So why post this one? Why now? I don’t know. No real reason I can think of at the moment. I just stumbled onto it and it hit me in the stomach. Sometimes it’s so unexpected and it can feel like a freight train has come out of nowhere.
You can bury things and try to hide from them, or try to hide them from yourself, but it doesn’t work, at least not for long, so why bother trying. You can wallow, or you can pick yourself up and keep on moving forward, but never forgetting to look back over your shoulder and remember everything you can. Taste the pain and remember the happiness. Pick through the agony and tease out the joy. Face it and hope that it gets a little easier each time. Hope that the happiness will eventually eclipse the sadness.
This sign lies just outside of Prince George, BC. It always marked the tail end of a long drive. Sometimes in horrible winter conditions.
This sign used to be a marker for “Almost Home”.
Now I see this photo of that marker and it makes me cry.
When I left again in May it was a terribly hard goodbye. Perhaps the last goodbye.
So many memories…I don’t know if I will ever come here again…
113 Photographs in 2013 – #92: In Memory
16 comments
(((hugs)))
thank you for your beautiful words… having 'come home' to Prince George numerous times after the first time I left as a child, and then coming back as an adult to create… to create… what? the home I thought I left? Lost? a life that once I thought eluded me? I have had those moments of random tears when I cross a memory up here: memories from early childhood; from the path along the way; always of people I have/do loved…. I then realize, that, it was never about the where that I live. It has always been about the what I live and the who I love in my life. The where I have lived is just the vessel that holds the trigger on the lock of a flood gate of feelings for those things and past moments of my life… Those places remind me of the wild ride of life and its dynamic ebb and flow. Thank you Paige, for being that trigger today…" Almost home" for me was the Cottonwood River Bridge then heading down the hill into the BCR site and seeing the lights of town show up after a long drive… Some times it is the yellowing aspen, but it will ALWAYS be the scent of cottonwood trees and honey that takes me home to the true innocence of childhood and my spirit.
thank you for your beautiful words… having ‘come home’ to Prince George numerous times after the first time I left as a child, and then coming back as an adult to create… to create… what? the home I thought I left? Lost? a life that once I thought eluded me? I have had those moments of random tears when I cross a memory up here: memories from early childhood; from the path along the way; always of people I have/do loved…. I then realize, that, it was never about the where that I live. It has always been about the what I live and the who I love in my life. The where I have lived is just the vessel that holds the trigger on the lock of a flood gate of feelings for those things and past moments of my life… Those places remind me of the wild ride of life and its dynamic ebb and flow. Thank you Paige, for being that trigger today…” Almost home” for me was the Cottonwood River Bridge then heading down the hill into the BCR site and seeing the lights of town show up after a long drive… Some times it is the yellowing aspen, but it will ALWAYS be the scent of cottonwood trees and honey that takes me home to the true innocence of childhood and my spirit.
thank you for your beautiful words… having ‘come home’ to Prince George numerous times after the first time I left as a child, and then coming back as an adult to create … to create… what ? the home I thought I left? Lost? a life that once I thought eluded me? I have had those moments of random tears when I cross a memory up here: memories from early childhood; from the path along the way; always of people i have/do loved…. I then realize, that, it was never about the where that I live. It has always been about the what I live and the who I love in my life. The where I have lived is just the vessel that holds the trigger on the lock of a flood gate of feelings for those things and past moments of my life… Those places remind me of the wild ride of life and its dynamic ebb and flow. Thank you Paige, for being that trigger today…” Almost home” for me was the Cottonwood River Bridge then heading down the hill into the BCR site and seeing the lights of town show up after a long drive… Some times it is the yellowing aspen, but it will ALWAYS be the scent of cottonwood trees and honey that takes me home to the true innocence of childhood and my spirit .
You know, my Mom always had a memory of you that she’d bring up every so often. She never let go of the horror she felt when she took you and I to a movie that still ranks as one of my all time faves. She took you and I to see the Life of Brian when it came out (waaaay back in 1979) not knowing what it was about. She always said how much she shrunk into her seat through that movie because of the content. Our family really had no religion, but she realized that it may have been extremely inappropriate to have taken someone else’s child to see something like that.
Thanks for your comment (Laura). For me, the smell of Lilacs take me home to Garvin Street and my childhood. They always will.
lol, i forgot your mom was at that movie! I was really way too young to grasp the subtle-ties of the whole god-no-god argument and I could never really recall when I’d seen it. I was an adult before I was able to appreciate the writing. It was just goofy then… Your mom must have been horrified… poor woman. Funny, I remember seeing it, but not the details. Lilacs will always be for my Granny. I remember Wednesday workshop at St Andrews, and your brothers dark room, and I think you lived down the street from Bruce Edwards (?).
Lilacs also remind me of Canoe and my Granny too. They don’t grow well here on the coast, and when people do grow them, they don’t have the smell they do inland. They need some cold weather to smell right.
Yes, Derek had a darkroom in the basement bathroom. Good memory!
Bruce Edwards, no, they lived…crap…thinking…close but not on my street. There was a walkthrough to another street and they lived just to one side of it, close to Carl Stene… Francois Street maybe? The path cut behind Spruceland, Teresa Stack used to live on the same street I think.
Parsnip Crescent! That’s where both Bruce and Teresa lived.
yah, ok, you were one crescent over. he was closer to spruceland.
Riiiiiight!
Not from memory, I Google mapped it.
good memories all’round… and yippee for google! 😀