Beautiful Tangle

 

 



I was visiting my mother, aging and somewhat disabled by her lack of fitness and muscle tone and the pain in her knees. Her old dog, Riley, had been my brother Christopher's dog and when Christopher died by suicide in 1996, Riley became my father's dog, and when my father died in 2000, Riley became my mother's dog. So this old dog was our last link to my dear brother who died alone and in despair in ’96. Riley was deaf and blind in 2007, when this picture was taken.

The old dog and I went down the length of the Island where I grew up, an island about one mile long and half a mile wide, in the middle of the St. Lawrence River, which is quite large. We walked slowly to a beach down by the old community dump. It was quiet, out of the way, peppled and reedy. There were ducks swimming out beyond the reeds. The shoreline was weedy and seedy and poplar trees leaned perilously overhead.

So there I was, filled with sadness, thinking about my mother being so dottery and Riley so old and disabled, blind, deaf. I had to touch him on his back to get his attention, to 'tell' him that I was changing activities. No longer walking, now sitting. No longer sitting, now walking. His nose did the rest. Riley who had been so young and filled with enthusiastic, doggy life. Riley, my last living link to Christopher, was dying before my eyes, for a dog with no sight and no hearing cannot live long, and as old and feeble as he was, his days were indeed numbered.

Add to all of this my own emotional tangle. My love for the Island, and knowledge that it had irrevocably changed, would never be again what it once was when I was a child, my life with my husband, the struggles and the fears, and all of the unknowns.

Yet, in that moment on that beach, with the camera, taking photographs as I love to do, I came across this tangle of vegetation. And although I am an avid amateur botanist, I do not know what this plant is. I fell in love instantly with the colours, the form and the texture of the image. I had to get it on film. I lay down among the mosquitos and spiders and pressed my body into the grey stones and pepples to get the image.

When I left the beach, Riley stumbling into things behind me, my heart ready to grieve for him, my eyes near to tears, I felt the perfection of each moment, the perfection of the beautiful tangle. Dead or dying, or newly born, all that we experience is perfect in itself.