Just as in life, in movies and in literature people dealing with grief and the loss of those they love go to the places where they last were with that person.
Even though they may have seen the body of the person dead in another place, even if they have been to the funeral and said their good byes and watched the coffin lowered into the ground.
Despite seeing that and experiencing all that we still seem to be wandering around looking for them. Half expecting them to walk around the corner, wanting them to turn up.
In the arts writers get to fulfill this wish.
Those grieving can get to speak to and perhaps hold their loved one more time, even after death.
I think its a desire we all have.
In the movie The Crow even Eric (himself dead) goes to the places and sorts though the things and the photographs of his beloved Shelly while back in life for his revenge.
Sarah gets to speak with Eric and this helps her to come to terms with her loss and perhaps eases her into accpetance that she has to deal with feeling alone, and learn to spend her life without Eric and Shelly.
Sadly for most of us (well probably all of us) this just isn't how it goes. Like Eric I have been able to revisit the places and to touch the things we shared. But unlike Sarah (or the policeman) we don't get to meet our loved ones again here.
Perhaps the closest we come to this is in dreams. Sometimes I get to meet Anita in my dreams. Mostly it is just to do things together as if nothing has happened. This seems to be just the subconscious bringing out things as it normally does.
Recently I had a dream about her that was a bit different. In this dream I was somehow in a place which was our home, but yet things which are not yet completed were completed. The renovations of one area were done and I was admiring the work that Anita had done. I liked the solution she had found to a problem we were discussing and I liked the colours she had painted it.
While I was admiring this she came home.
I was intensely pleased to see her and just held her in my arms. She seemed a little surprised and I understood that she did not know. She somehow had never died and it was just some future (or perhaps present) point as if life had gone on normally from August last year.
Watching The Crow I wished that I could have those moments that Sarah did, to one more time hold her in my arms and feel her and smell her.But then I realised today "what would that bring me?". Surely as the sun will rise tomorrow I will have to get by without her all over again. Perhaps if I can't have her here with me again that dreams are somehow better than such visits of fiction and drama. For I know she is not here, but only that she is there.
Like Eric Draven I have been able to go through the things of our life together and some of the things of her life before.
When I cam back to Finland I found some of her artworks in the ceiling. Wrapped by me for storage back in 2006. I had forgotten they were there till I found them (and instantly remembered ... oh yeah)
This one struck me as soon as I looked at it. It was one that I was "not allowed to look at" (as is the wont of some artists at times). Among the many things which I saw in that image (and I'm not turning this into a critique) it was clear to me that there was an element of self portrait in it. Knowing her face as I do it was immediately like she was staring out of the picture at me.
Being the photographer I am, naturally I have some images of her on hand. Tonight I thought I'd just compose a section of that to see how well my mind had put them together.
So while I don't get to hold her that one more time I do at least have the short visits of dreams and the things which are left behind.
Curiously many of the images I have are only digital, having never been printed there are perhaps equally ephemeral and intangible as the dreams (for without a computer and some electricity they can't be seen and are for all intents not here either).
My only wish is that when I am passing we will be together again ... somehow
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