Dear Fran.
This photograph, Looking Out, is by Norwegian photographer Vidar Nordli-Mathisen. The moment I saw it, I knew I wanted to share it with you and explore its relevance to our lives and friendship.
You’ve always been a traveller at heart. A gypsy, as you expressed it once, contrasting your wanderlust with my nature as a stay-at-home, rocking chair loving, “comfort creature traveling vicariously.” I’ve loved being your virtual travel buddy. We’ve seen some places together, haven’t we! From that perspective, you’re the woman standing on the lake shore, pack on your back, about to head off on your latest adventure. I’m watching from inside the house, experiencing the world though your eyes and your words.
The scene is Hovden in Norway. We’ve never been there, but you stopped briefly in Stavanger and Bergen on your way home from travelling around Europe in the summer of 2013. The lake and mountains remind me of that trip, especially Germany and Austria. Those three months proved a massive challenge to you on all levels; emotional, physical, and mental. They also challenged our friendship and my ability to support you from afar. With decent Internet, it’s true what we say: no one is too far away to be cared for or to care. Without reliable connection, it was very hard. Sitting in my room here in England without the daily calls we’d become used to — I think we had only two or three in all the time you were away — I truly felt in the dark. We came through it, though. (Let’s not do it again!)
It’s not just the outer world I explore with you. Travel’s always been an analogy for your inner journeying. As you once said, “Just being willing to go into yourself is brave. Actually making the steps is a hero’s journey.” We used that quotation to introduce the chapter of our book where we described those months in Europe. As well as Norway, you stopped briefly in Reykjavík on your return journey. We drew a parallel between what you described as the “bleak harsh landscape” of Iceland and your depression. “Let’s use this part of the journey,” I suggested. “This Darktime. Feel the sadness, and then leave it behind on these shores.”
There’s another way of reading the photograph. The person inside the house is you, sitting in the dark looking out at the bright potential of the world outside. The woman on the lake shore is also you, but the person you might have been if life had been otherwise. Healthy. Fit. Free from pain and fatigue. Capable of anything she dares to dream. For all your achievements and adventures I know there’ve been times when your life has felt small, less than, more constrained than it might have been had illness not visited you. It’s hard to mourn a life you never had the chance to live.
I remember when you lived in your little house on Peaks Island. You’d take walks around the island or on Centennial Beach, then return to share with me what you’d seen and thought and felt, often expressed in haiku-style poems. At that time you were endeavouring to find a way out of the deepest depression you’d ever known. As you wrote at the time, “I was trying to save my life, to get out of the house onto Centennial and wait for the haikus to come. That was all I had.”
Looking at the photograph in that way brings tears to my eyes. You could only stand the brightness of outside in small doses before having to return to the darkness. Step by step, haiku by haiku, you found your way back into the world, but it wasn’t easy and success was never certain. I might have lost you then.
Another shift in perspective. The woman standing by the lake is still, contemplative. Perhaps she’s not setting out on new adventures but returning home from meeting friends or from the store, her backpack filled not with travel supplies but with wholesome ingredients for the meals she’ll prepare in her cosy home. She ponders her life, everything she’s seen and achieved, and questions whether one more adventure would add anything to her appreciation of life or her sense of self-worth. Perhaps, she thinks, it’s enough to stand in awe and take it all in. With a final glance at the mountains, she walks the narrow winding path to her little house. Opening the door, she calls out to say she’s home. I’ve already got the kettle on.
Photograph Looking Out by Vidar Nordli-Mathisen at Unsplash.
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