The Remainder of Things

I spend a lot of time taking snapshots of the world around me as I pass through it. I’m often the crazy lady in the cafe photographing the salt shaker as it meets the table surface or the angle of the light shining through my now empty coffee cup.

I love to stop and do a mini photo shoot of tree trunks or branches or the sidewalk or cracks in a wall, or paint peeling or a random patch of grass I’ve fallen in love with for a fleeting affair.

It’s deeply meditative. My version of stopping to smell the roses, I guess.

And, then, sometime later, I sit and draw them or make them into something or layer these images into artworks … and, as I do so, I feel like I’m drawing and layering my life. I know they probably sounds weird and cheesy but, I get to relive them as I play with them and I get to make new meaning of them as I turn them into some kind of an expression of whatever I am feeling or experiencing in that given moment. It’s a truly beautiful thing.

Yesterday I finished creating the three artworks that will act as the backdrop (think stage set) for The Winter Gathering on Saturday. They will stand on easels and kind of encase the space the speakers and performers will use as “stage”.

I wasn’t going to share this part publicly but, in honour of four beautiful and precious humans in my life, and a whole other angle on “what grows in the dark”, I will.

These three artworks were created over the last little while – I finished the third only yesterday, as I reflected on and grieved and lived the death of three friends and the unbelievable grief of another.

There is something strange about making art while your heart is breaking. You sit down thinking you are arranging photographs, choosing colours, layering textures, drawing lines. And then, somewhere along the way, you realise you are actually trying to make sense of love. Or loss. Or memory. Or all three at once.

The first of these works was created in memory of my beautiful friend, Linda-Louise.

Nine weeks ago today, the world became a little quieter.

Linda-Louise had been part of my life for almost forty years. She was one of those rare people whose influence can't really be measured because it was woven through so many ordinary moments. Art. Drama. Theatre. Creativity. Conversations. Cups of tea. Laughter. Turning up. Helping. Encouraging. Believing in people before they quite believed in themselves.

She taught me so much about making art. But much more importantly, she taught me what it looked like to make a life.

Linda-Louise possessed one of the most remarkable qualities I have ever witnessed in another human being. Kindness wasn't something she occasionally practised. It was simply the way she moved through the world. If a person needed help, she showed up. If an animal needed rescuing, she showed up. If someone was hurting, lonely, overwhelmed or simply needed another pair of hands, Linda-Louise showed up.

There never seemed to be a calculation. No weighing up whether it was convenient. No wondering whether she'd already done enough. She simply seemed to live with the quiet assumption that today would almost certainly contain another opportunity to make somebody else's life a little lighter. And she would take it.

In one of our final conversations together we found ourselves talking, as people often do when time begins to feel precious, about life. About what matters. About the imprint we leave behind.

And after all the years she had lived (67 to be exact)... after all the wisdom she had gathered ... after everything ... she quietly smiled and said: "The most important thing is just choosing kindness each day. If we could all just be kind …"

I've thought about that sentence almost every day since. Because perhaps that is all any of us really leave behind. Not our achievements. Not our resumes. Not the things we owned. But the trail of kindness that continues long after we are gone.

The second artwork slowly became Gavin.

Gentle is the word that keeps returning. Gavin spent the last couple of years doing battle with a cruel brain cancer that would have broken so many people. And yet, somehow, every time we thought, "Surely this is the point where it becomes too much..." there he was. Still smiling. Still delighting in his dogs. Still loving Sharon. Still loving his children.  Still finding joy in the ocean. Still choosing family. Still somehow radiating peace. Not because life was easy. But because love remained bigger.

I've known Gavin and Sharon for most of my life. Like Linda-Louise, they are part of that small group of people who quietly become woven into the fabric of who you are without you ever noticing exactly when it happened.

As I layered photographs and paint and charcoal and ink and scribbles and lines together, I wasn't only thinking about Gavin. I was thinking about all the ordinary Saturdays. The conversations. The meals. The years. The accumulation of a friendship that slowly becomes part of your own story.

And then yesterday... I finished the third artwork. For Gary.

Gary was Linda-Louise's beloved life partner, her constant companion through decades of life together. To think of Linda-Louise is to think of Gary. Their lives had become so intertwined that one story naturally held the other.

When I think of Gary, I think of welcome. I think of conversations around their home. I think of laughter. I think of music. I think of his generous willingness to help me record songs, make videos and encourage whatever creative project I happened to be dreaming up at the time. He had this beautiful way of quietly helping other people become more fully themselves.

As I stood back and looked at the three finished works yesterday, something dawned on me that I hadn't consciously realised while I was making them. These weren't three separate artworks. They were one conversation. Because these weren't simply three separate people. They were deeply connected lives.

Linda-Louise and Gary had shared a lifetime together.

Gavin and Sharon had shared a lifetime together.

Linda-Louise and Sharon were not only dear friends but long-time business partners who built years of work and memories side by side.

They celebrated one another's joys. They carried one another's burdens. They laughed together. They built lives alongside one another. Their stories had become beautifully entangled. Our stories became beautifully entangled.

And then, over the course of just eight and a half weeks, that shared landscape changed forever.

I don't know how anyone begins to comprehend that.

Perhaps grief is simply love with nowhere left to go.

As I layered photographs of winter trees, weathered walls, peeling paint and quiet landscapes together, I realised I wasn't only remembering those we have lost. I was also sitting with Sharon.

Sharon, if you happen to read this, these works are yours too. Not because they can lessen your pain. They can't. But because every layer I added carried thoughts of you. Thinking of you. Praying for you. Trying, in the only way I know how, to somehow carry the tiniest corner of something that no one should ever have to carry alone.

Sometimes we don't know how to carry someone else's sorrow. We can't fix it. We can't explain it. We can't make sense of it. Sometimes all we can do is make something beautiful and quietly place it beside them as if to say, "I see you. I see your love. I see what has been lost. And I will remember … with you."

Perhaps that's why the trees kept appearing. Trees are remarkable things. We admire them for what rises above the ground. Their branches. Their shape. Their beauty. But none of those things exist without the hidden work beneath the surface. The roots. The unseen growth. The quiet strengthening that nobody notices because it happens in darkness.

These four beautiful humans have spent decades growing roots in one another's lives, in my life, and in the lives of countless others. None of these things were loud. None demanded applause. They were simply lived, day after day, in thousands of ordinary acts that became extraordinary simply because they were repeated over a lifetime.

On Saturday evening these artworks will quietly stand behind our speakers and singers throughout The Winter Gathering. Most people will simply see three abstract works framing the stage. Most won't know that every layer carries the memory of people deeply loved. Most won't know that the trees represent roots that continue to nourish long after the tree itself has disappeared from view.

And perhaps that is exactly as it should be. Because isn't that true of all of us? Every single day we stand inside the unseen gifts of people who have shaped us. A teacher. A neighbour. A friend. A partner. Someone who quietly chose kindness over and over again until it became part of who we are too.

The Winter Gathering is about exploring hidden growth. About the strange and beautiful things that happen beneath the surface while the world assumes nothing is happening at all. It turns out these artworks have been quietly teaching me the same lesson. Perhaps what grows in the dark isn't only resilience. Perhaps it isn't only hope. Perhaps what grows in the dark is love itself. The kind of love that quietly becomes roots. The kind that keeps nourishing people long after we can no longer see where it began.

And perhaps the greatest tribute I can offer Linda-Louise, Gavin and Gary is not simply to remember them with tears, but to continue the work they spent their lives doing so beautifully.

To choose kindness.

To show up.

To love deeply.

To welcome generously.

To carry one another when winter comes.

Because if these last few weeks have taught me anything, it is this:

A life is not measured by how long it lasts.

It is measured by how deeply its roots continue to feed the forest after it is gone.