by Brand Kurpershoek
In a year everything can change,
the whole system you used to, the core of your being can be different in a moment of time. Everybody experiences it in a different way and learns to cooperate with it on a different levels, and none of them are the same, how do you even grasp something that does not manifest in an image, feeling or words. Flipping from all emotions that a human being can have.
Grief is a difficult process, a process that will never be finished and specially if you lose somebody who is really close to you. I lost my mother last year in February cast by cancer. A fight that was already lost from the beginning. A fight that we did not control. This project is about the process that me and my family went true after she passed away.
I made three images that represent my brother, father and me.
Don’t forget that you can give,
Don’t forget that everything exists,
Don’t forget that being alone is being together,
because memory makes us hole,
trees have leaves,
and leaves let go and fall slowly,
till it gently touches the ground, where it after a
long and lonely journey,
comes together with all, all that slowly decays,
because that is where the decay come to life,
comes back to its essence,
till that creates the memory.
We have this story of two birds,
A pigeon landed on our balcony on the day that my mother’s mom passed away.
This pigeon was one that we had never seen before, beautiful white and definitely different then the common ones that you see around the city. We kept Afra in our house for a week so that people could come and wish their last words before she was cremated. This bird arrived on the first day of this week. At first, we thought it was just a bird passing by. But it stayed all the 7 days, it slept on the balcony. One day we decided to see if the pigeon was maybe injured, and to our surprise the bird was tame and was completely fine with us touching her. On the last day a second pigeon arrived. It was the same kind, bright white. They seemed to enjoy their reunion. On the last day we saw them in the morning. but after coming back from the cremation, both birds where gone.
We never saw these birds again.