Dear Grief,

Hello old friend, it has been a while.

I guess you have been in the waiting room all along and I just didn’t see you while I’ve been busy.

But I’ve looked around now and spotted you in the corner, sitting quietly in the soft, winter light coming through the lace curtains hanging from the window.

I have to admit that in some ways I’ve missed you. You have been my companion over the years, like my cloak to keep me warm and shrouded in your gentle darkness. Here you are again, mon ami.

You snuck in while I was busy building a bridge from life-before-Covid to somewhere-that-I-thought-would-be-better after it, but while I was consumed by the construction, I mis-gauged the destination.

The Wait

Looking Forward, Looking Back

Passing the Rice Fields

I wanted so much to focus on the future. You see, I believed this pandemic was an opportunity - a chance for us to reassess what is important in our lives and to appreciate all that we’ve had and evermore be mindful of all that we will have. But now every day I see people airing their grievances: I haven’t gotten the vaccine yet, even though I am eligible; is there any place or any way I can get it sooner; it’s all very unfair that some states are ahead of others; what is the prime minister doing to cause these delays?

I’ve already received the vaccine so I’m ready to go to country XYZ, nevermind how people in those countries may feel about my arrival right now.

You know, friend, that here in Japan we haven’t even started vaccinating our medical personnel yet? Did you know that in the rest of the world it is going to take years to roll this out? Can we not wait a few more weeks or months? Most of the world is going to be waiting and waiting, and waiting and here we are feeling aggrieved about a few weeks’ delay.

Now I fear that perhaps instead of a kinder, gentler future, we are still going to be lost in our focus on ourselves.

Encased extinguisher ©2020 George Nobechi

If photography speaks to “truth,” then we as photographers are truth-seekers, and the truth is not a pretty picture. So, I am grieving - yes, for all the lives we’ve lost and for the world we’ve left behind - but mostly now for the recognition that we are still the same people as we were before this all began - that an opportunity for us to change and be kinder and gentler and more selfless is being lost. Everyone is in a rush to get across the bridge to the other side, to get out of the pandemic and “back to normal,” and we are all missing the present, ignoring the journey to get there.

Amid the sadness and darkness of this pandemic there is light out there. It is all around us, in little corners of our rooms, in our eyes revealing tired, but genuine smiles behind our masked faces. In Japan, we have an expression: ichi-go, ichi-e - “one lifetime, one meeting.” It means that what we are experiencing right now will never happen again, so pay attention. That’s what photography does — in one frame, in one click, we memorialize a moment in which we are present, where we declare to ourselves and to the world, “I’m here. I see you, life. I recognize you, in all your forms, including this one right now, which might not be my favorite.” That is the greatest gift that photography has given me: in the act of making a photograph I consciously accept my presence in the universe and my awareness of a moment. I slow down, and I am present.

Are we forgetting once again to “Stop and smell the roses?” - As Mac Davis says, “the sweetest things in life are free and there right before your eyes.” Don’t be in such a hurry to leave. Stay with us a while. Smile with us, shed a tear with us, take a deep breath with us. Make a photograph of a moment and give it an enduring life and remind us of that which we are too quick to dismiss.

Grief, you tried and true and unassuming friend. I see you now and acknowledge your presence. Let’s talk for a while… until it’s time for you to go and for Hope to take your place once more.