The mind’s eye slowly emerges, hanging over my shoulder for hours after the official declaration at 850pm.
With the nurses’ gentle request, I comply without a word, and I sign the paperwork.
I walk back into the hospital room where she lies. The only sounds are from her neighbour, another patient in another bed, their laboured breathing as sign of life.
I gaze out the window to the nighttime lights of the city. From a great height, I cannot see individuals, but I see them in motion on the streets, and alive in the lights of their houses.
At her bedside, I hold her hand, cool to the touch. I place my other hand on her forehead: there’s a little warmth as I smooth her skin with my thumb. Her eyes are closed, but there’s no breath or acknowledgement. When I close my eyes, the dream doesn’t go away, and ashes begin to fall. I lean down next to her ear, and whisper quiet words at the close.
I palm her cheek one final time, as I’ve done over the last days and weeks.
At the doorway, I turn around and look at her still body one last time. I will not see my mother again until the funeral.
I thank the nurses, and make my way out of the Palliative Care Unit. To the elevators. To the lobby. Out into the cold night. Inside the car, my hands are locked frozen onto the wheel, and I begin to shake with tremors. I let the jolt and shock pass through, and with the recall of past experience, I glide over giant waves of grief.
For the first time, I enter the family house without either parent. It’s surreal and unsettling.
From 1976, this house has been a busy noisy compact home for us; I remember us as kids racing to the top of the stairs to claim our very own bedroom.
A family of us: once at 4, now at 2.
Alone now, the walls echo with sounds from the floors, wood frame, and the pipes. I ascend the stairs in the dark, navigating the upper curve from memory. I shuffle to the parents’ bedroom. With a flick of the switch, the unmade bed is in the same final state, when the paramedics moved her into the waiting ambulance earlier that day.
In less than 12 hours from house to hospital, she slipped away, peacefully and quietly into the aether.
With my parents’ passing, I fulfilled my promise to them. There’d been new beginnings, layered with new understanding and sprinkles of forgiveness along the way. I was granted an extra-time bonus in years: a son to his parents, and a parent for his Mom and Dad.
And it is here, I died twice, in the city of Vancouver.
Above/featured: Vancouver, 22 December.
I look back at the 2020 year with the following images to address how different locations in both Seattle and Vancouver question the nature and ideas of displacement and belonging, home and travel.
Above/featured: “Auténtica Cuba, auténtica fun”.
I’ve remained within metro Vancouver during the CoVid19 pandemic, but I’m curious about how the city’s airport appears in this unusual holiday season.
With no-travel recommendations and other travel restrictions, all international airports are operating at a small fraction of the usual traffic. At YVR Vancouver international airport, about 100-thousand passengers (pax) pass through the airport every day around Christmas. But numbers are way down; there are few daily international flights among the scatter of domestic departures throughout the B.C. province and other parts of Canada.
With these photographs, I present a view of both domestic and international terminals at the airport on Tuesday afternoon, 3 days before Christmas. Walking the empty and quiet concourse is surreal; I wonder if there are more airport staff than travellers at any given moment. (Completing my time at the airport, I stayed to the ground by hopping on rapid transit, shopped for some food, and returned to the family house: how extraordinarily mundane.)
Above/featured: Grouse Mountain looms over a cricket match at Upper Brockton, with the bowler delivering from the mountain end to the pavilion end.
It’s not typical 21st-century sport in North America, but it is Canada’s first summer sport. Many of cricket’s practitioners in Vancouver’s picturesque Stanley Park have roots from India and Pakistan; among them the shouts of “shabash” are heard often during play.
In childhood, I was enamored with baseball. With its similar origins, I discovered cricket with time spent in Australia, New Zealand, the Bahamas, and South Africa. The natural connection is the former British Empire. I began with T20, the shortest format of the game; with curiosity and time, my hunger encompassed the 50-over one-day format (ODI). It’s my start with the short white-ball format that I’ve developed an appreciation for the long format of the game with red-ball Test cricket.
But is the cricket ground at Vancouver’s Stanley Park “the most beautiful cricket ground in the world”? (With Table Mountain as the backdrop, some might proclaim Newlands Cricket Ground in Cape Town, South Africa as the most beautiful/scenic.)
Above/featured: Great Hall, Museum of Anthropology, Vancouver – 5 May 2017 (6D1).
In Canada, National Aboriginal Day is held on or near the same day as northern summer solstice to celebrate language, culture, and tradition on the longest day of the year. In 1996, then Governor-General of Canada, Roméo LeBlanc, proclaimed June 21 as National Aboriginal Day. In 2017, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the change to National Indigenous Peoples Day to include First Nations, Inuit, and MΓ©tis indigenous peoples.
To highlight some wonderfully engaging work by contemporary indigenous artists, I provide examples of art seen and exhibited in both Vancouver and Seattle.
Fotoeins Fotografie 