Finding Light (2018)

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Each morning I steal away to spend time in the woods. In nature, I consider the sayings so often said to me. I wonder if, despite the grim diagnosis given my husband, there are rays of hope. I’ve been advised it is darkest before dawn. I am told there will be a light at the end of the tunnel.

     

I rail against my husband’s dementia. He is now gentle and slow, unsteady on his feet, searching to make order of what he can still understand. I pull back and watch him. Will today be the day his failing heart gives out? I hold my breath. We exist together and apart in this lonely place. Opposites. One of us is dark, one is light. He is oddly content in his diminished existence. I am anguished.

     

I search for rays of light in the shadows of the woods. I wonder if answers can be found there. Light coexists with the darkness. I create images in search of the answers I seek. I question whether the light or the shadows hold what I need. One does not exist without the other. Perhaps the answers lie within their partnership.  Maybe, at the very least, somewhere within that darkness and that light, I will find the balance which enables me to go forward with grace.