Been Gone a Long Time ….

Today it’s 27 December 2008, two days since my first Christmas without my mother. I haven’t written for weeks, and so much has happened I’ve been finding it increasingly difficult to know where to begin.

It is late afternoon as I write this sitting under the covers of her old bed in France. The room is dark except for the trails of the burnt orange light bleeding across the cold painted walls. It has been a beautiful day, the sun has hung low and heavy in the near freezing sky, while I have kicked leaves and stared at the river, wondering if she was with me – or sat beside my father back at the house. She sent me snow yesterday. It came and went on the same day, and was as heavy and white as any Christmas card. I thought about her as I pressed my hands against the glass of the back door and watched our dog run through the falling flakes. I hoped she knew I missed her, even though I could still barely say her name in front of anyone. It is hard to know where to start when so much has happened: six weeks doesn’t sound long, but in that time I had returned from the funeral in France, gone back to work, flown to Hong Kong and China on business, and then travelled with my camera through the Meizhou mountains, to return to my father’s house again – full circle. At work I simply couldn’t deal with the faces, those hesitant stares – what do you say to someone whose mother has died? I was so far behind my schedule and desperate to escape that I begged to visit the factories in China to catch up. I used up what remained of my annual leave to buy some time afterwards. The trip was a chance to lose myself in a far-off place where I could maybe try and take on this strange new thing called grief.

I flew out on the Friday and arrived the next evening, slept, and awoke on Sunday. I automatically packed a small bag with my camera for a day’s shooting and set off. I guess it was naive to expect that I could just carry on as before. I walked to my favourite places for finding characters: the markets, the down town districts, and finally the park where the old ladies danced in their sun hats for their weekly exercise. It was there that I stopped, I sat, and I cried, I didn’t take a single picture. I watched them sway in the midday sun, smiling at each other’s awkward steps, and laughing when they all lost the beat, and I felt my mother like an ache in my side, I missed her so much. It was the first time I had been so utterly alone, and I realised how completely exhausted I was. I walked from bench to bench and tried to pull myself together but it was no use. I went back to my hotel and slept outside on the roof under a hazy blue sky. I just couldn’t let it in the memory of her, it was still too much and so terrible and raw.

After my first day in Hong Kong I left for China and to the embrace of my dear friend Claudine. She is sixty-eight and is everything I want to be when I get old – a strong, well travelled, intelligent, beautiful woman who started as a work colleague and has now become like family to me. I stayed nearby and worked in her factory until the end of the week. We then set out on the eight-hour drive to the mountains of Meizhou, where we were going to visit some of the last remaining Tulou of the Hakka Chinese. I needed this escape so, so badly. It is true to say that throughout mum’s treatment I had fantasized that the answer to all my problems lay in the distant reaches of other countries, and that in order to find myself I felt I had to go there alone. Weeks later, after my return from China, I knew how wrong I had been. That actually wherever you run to, these feelings will follow you. During my trip I was haunted by the memories of my mother – they were with me at every step, and lay down beside me each night. I suppose we can only heal ourselves by reaching inside and learning which parts to face, and which ones to quietly close the door on. I chose to cut off the negative, and concentrated on the positives, whilst desperately trying to remember my mother when she was well. After my return I lost any interest in writing about my travels as I knew I would never be able to show her where I had been. All I could see was a horizon of endless months and years where she would no longer be waiting to hear my stories, and so I caved in and simply gave up.

It is now March 2009 and I am still unable to express myself over my mother’s death, I know many people are expecting an explosion of images through my grief – maybe they are right, and that will come, but for now if I’m honest it is still too unreal. In order to make new work about her would mean I have to face the fact that she really has gone and I’m just not sure I can do that right now. I know there is a new beginning waiting for me, and I’ll somehow find a way of taking my first steps without her. My photos may not be of her, but I hope whatever I do will celebrate what she would have wanted, which – I’m sure – is to carry on, and keep exploring the beauty that surrounds us all.

Some moments from my trip …..

‘Save this memory’

I can’t explain how I felt when I took this, I’m just so very glad I did, because now I will be able to forever hold it in my heart.
It was the first time I realised I had stopped in a very long time. The first time I could remember not worrying about my mother. The first time I felt that if she could have ever been standing beside me, it was then.
And so I stood, and let it wash over me, the soft afternoon light, the mercury ribbon of the river as it sliced through the distant blues and greens,….. the endless beauty that melted into the gentle darkness of the mountains…….
I almost whispered her name.

This old lady is 93 and was one of the few people left living in one of the last Hakka tulou houses that I visited. She was the wife of the man in the shot above, who had been sitting outside their doorway with his head in his hands. She had been in bed for over a month, after falling badly outside on the stone floor. Her daughter had invited us into the cramped, dark room to see her mother, and the experience simply took my breath away. We were led through a pitch black entrance, into an even smaller freezing, damp, windowless space about 2.5 meters square. As I approached I could hear a wailing noise, of crying and excited words, and as my eyes adjusted, I finally saw her. She lay on an old raised black lacquered bed, edged with gold paint and faded flowers. There were a hundred bundled blankets in purple and red underneath her tiny frame as she sat and blinked in the half light reaching out with her long twisted hands. I could barely speak, it was like standing inside a painting from a hundred years ago.

My heart was pounding. I had never imagined I would find myself in such a personal and private family moment like this. She was shaking and obviously extremely weak, and kept touching our hands crying. She really was the last of the original clans people and her family allowed me to take her photograph. I had no idea if any of the pictures would come out, the room was so small and dark I couldn’t even take a photo of the inside because my lenses could only pick out the corners of one side. It was tragic, beautiful, heart wrenching, unexplainable, moving and vivid all at once. I can safely say I will never forget meeting this woman for the rest of my life.