Collage Life

This past February was my son’s last reading week as he was set to graduate, I took a day off just to spend with him. He offered that I choose the adventure, but then realized my choice would be antique markets and cemeteries, so he thought again.

It’s true, I do like cemeteries. I like history and family trees, and cemeteries have a lot to offer. Every now and then Google pictures makes a collage for me with a wonderful title like July day or summer fun, and inevitably there will be some shots of flowers, family, pets, and a few tombstones.

I always laugh at the mash up of things that I photograph. Right in the middle of captured joyful moments are these stone markers of lives lived. Tombstones do reflect that a life ended, but also mark where a person who lived on this earth for a period of time now rests – a person who had dreams and joys and experienced storms of different kinds.

I guess while I do not plan to frame any of these masterpieces the collages do reflect how I spent some time. It’s a tricky thing balancing living with the end of life, balancing joy with sorrow, knowing that we each need to truly live a full life and to completely live with an understanding of all the colours of lives. There are a lot of tombstones in our lives, the ends of things, the paths not taken, the people lost, the job changes, the relationships changed or ended. At the end of all that there is this mix, flowers of joy, people that made the sunset brighter and clouds to help us know that while we live, we face it all.

Photo by Taryn Elliott on Pexels.com