If you’re reading this via email, tap the top banner to go to the beauty of Teal.
Yesterday my sweet man flew to Sydney. To Gadigal Country. His birthplace.
For family ceremony.
To scatter his mother’s ashes in the tide on the sandstone rock shelves with his brother.
Our son accompanied him. Made sure he ate and stayed hydrated.
Supported him. Documented the rite of passage for the two brothers.
I stayed in Brisbane. Wandered bamboo groves. Made pictures in pink and green. He loves bamboo ~
Our daughter was present at the ceremony.
Not seen these past 9 years. Although we still all live in the same tropical city.
She would not look at Mark as he greeted her. Her head down. Her body small.
She had come to speak her words about her grandmother.
Claim her right to mourn her, publicly.
Her own three daughters are not allowed to know their grandmother.
To meet their grandmother. To know they have one.
They have been told we are dead.
I hear from friends.
Our family is sunder and rip and shred.
It feels like the desecration of
a Temple.
This is the face of estrangement.
We are all still in shock. In grief.
Bewildered.
9 years on.
As I walked and made the images, I was surprised at my breathlessness.
The weakness in my body, so that I had to lean the front of my spine onto the bamboo and rest my forehead on the long creaking poles. I was dizzy.
My lungs felt squeezed. I couldn’t speak. And then I remembered;
this is how my animal organism responds to grief,
for my daughter
For my granddaughters
A little later, sitting in the parked car, when my son sent me the wee vids of my man and his brother kneeling on the rocks and pouring their mum’s ashes into the teal and foam swirl at their feet, I realised that as I was pressing the shutter, they were pouring the remains of their mother’s body into the sea.
Saltwater.
Lineage
Songline
What happens, when both are broken ?
A film, Bamboo in Pink
Music Udaipur, by Thomas Newman