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Colleen, I’m feeling blue. Ethereal, but a moment, delicate, fragile, gossamer, tenuous – life. We are here for a moment in time. My photographs depict some of those moments passed which will never be here again. Suddenly, things change. You realize how utterly delicately we interact. Loss is part, parting inevitable. I have been lucky to have experienced loss in small quantity. I am no stranger to love and loss. But, I have been largely spared. Hug your loved ones tight. Love them, tightly.
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Colleen came with three cats from West Virginia – Patch, Elle, Willow. We got Spice and Feather a year or so later. And then came Ray and Nutley in 2018. Patch left us in 2021. Peas and Tillie came last year – because I had an empty food bowl. That would be eight happy cats…. And just a year later Ray is gone. It took a while but the tears finally came. I don’t cry. I never did – too much. I was between the medical side and the emotional side of my personalities.
For fun, we did group shots of our family about once a year. It is poignant to look back now. Adding and subtracting, we have cats. Colleen laughs at how Spice, or was it Feather, one of them grabbed me in the pet store and said they were coming home with us. Tryouts! Each time we went to get pet food, it was tryouts amongst the rescue kitties. You win some. You lose some. Ray and Nutley proved adorable. Tillie and Peas are crazy. All are loved, the ones we have, and, the ones we’ve lost. No platitudes, please. I am no stranger to love and loss. It is never easier from one to the next. I cried today as I remember those we have lost. Seven cats again. Colleen said it best, “It feels very empty in the house with Ray suddenly gone.”
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