The Water Will Carry Us

My father, and his mother before him, loved the ocean. My dad was the only person I’ve ever known to bodysurf the waves, sans board. My grandmother swam every day, a slow, methodical freestyle that left one puzzled as to how she stayed afloat. 

In the aftermath of my father’s passing from cancer, I return to the ocean with my camera, again and again, to remember. I trace the shoreline, a place of perpetual flux. Creatures cling to rocks, waiting for the salt water to rouse them back to life. Others wash up onto the sand in final surrender. Life and death aren’t separate enterprises here; low tide bears on its breath as much decay as vitality. The water carries us gently on its back before it pulls us soundlessly under.

In my father’s last months, I photographed him to mark the moments we had left, to try to stop time. With my camera I could make the oppressive sadness feel meaningful, somehow. I could control our sliver of reality which was narrowing with every passing day.

Now, I surrender to the same waters that bore my ancestors. I watch for light along the coast; my dad always said he could tell the time of day in my mother’s paintings of the Maine shoreline. I open myself to the moments when time opens, a little fissure forms, and I suddenly feel closer to my dad, my grandmother—some mysterious place where the cosmos is felt. Through these photographic meditations, I hold my family’s memory close, engaging in a tradition that extends far beyond me, deep into the past and into an uncertain future.

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