Abita
January 15th, 2014, 04:20 AM
When my mother died of a malignant tumor found too late, I knew there must have been warning signs: she would have signaled the slow mutations with sunken eyes, a tinge of yellowness, frailty - some visible manifestation of the illness before her body’s final resignation. They were there, and I’d missed them.
Worse than my failure to recognize her illness, I couldn’t even recall her in health. I thought back to specific days and events before the endless series of hospital visits, but was never able to remember whether her hair parted to the side or center before it started to fall out, or the way her hands had looked before the skin began to thin and reveal the delicate blue veins underneath.
It’s an unshakeable guilt considering my career, which relies almost entirely upon recognizing details that others miss. Specifically, I study forensic photographic evidence. It began in college when an industry veteran identified my unusual talent for catching hidden details, features so mundane that they’re invisible to the average human eye. I was quickly developed through courses, clinics and classes led by forensic specialists and crime scene photographers, even flown from continent to continent, all in the name of honing my singular, bizarre specialty.
Now, I’m paid to analyze, categorize, number, alphabetize and index whatever is placed in front of me: lurid photos from crime scenes, gas station surveillance videos, photos snapped offhandedly at a child’s birthday party that have since become classified evidence. Eventually the shots are all sorted into the same metal containers, arranged by case file, and hidden behind identical white tabs. I’ve learned to become a sort of machine, distancing myself from the violence and sifting the images presented to me into their discreet components, void of emotion or consequence.
Sometimes though, in the face of a uniquely horrific event, our senses and natural abilities fail us.
Throughout the last weeks of my mother’s life, her body spent after fighting the poisons that for months had been administered as treatments, she remained composed. She went gracefully as always, in her sleep. I woke to a room full of nurses, slumped in a chair beside her bed, my hand clenched in a fist of bed sheets. I was avoiding the inevitable to the last, shamefully unprepared.
Since her death, I’ve tuned in to my surroundings, introducing the intense observation I typically reserve for work into my daily life - as if that could prevent future catastrophe, or somehow compensate for my previous, unthinkable oversight. I often slip into daydream on my way home, watching the houses slide past with their even white siding and identical plots of land. I can capture minute details in one go even though I only see each scene in passing.
One of the houses, the largest in our modest neighborhood, always stands out. It was built recently, shortly following my mother’s passing, massive and immaculate. The family who lives there has a young girl whom I often see tumbling around the yard, the child just as tidy as her surroundings in a neat jumper and white shoes tied with identical bows. A potbellied beagle teeters behind her, his gate no doubt slowed by many years racing to catch fallen crumbs.
“Pristine” is the word that often comes to mind when I see that house. “Predictable.”
Driving by one evening, I saw the girl trailing in a jagged line on tiptoe behind her mother. She appeared to float, weightless; her toes seemed to barely graze the ground. Her mother guided her toward the front door with a hand gently clasped around the girl’s finger. If not for her mother’s hand, it seemed as if the girl might float off into the evening air.
I glimpsed a pair of shoes hanging over a telephone wire in the lawn behind them. They were deathly still, stuck there indefinitely – scuffed up tennis sneakers that would have known no place in that home, surely thrown there by some passerby. I imagined the thrower’s shoulder muscles rolling back in preparation, a hand closed firmly around the thin laces. Then the calculated release, the shoes flying to their destination. It wasn’t luck, really, that landed them squarely on the wire: the force and direction of the pitch, the nature of the wind that day, the weight of the ragged sneakers, all determined the end result. The tips of the laces dangled limply now, struck into inevitable immobility, thin grey lines outlined in the sky.
Weeks later, driving by the house, the usual scene unfolded but the Beagle was missing. It was the first day since I could remember that he hadn’t been outside when I passed. A small, home-made cross already jutted from the ground beneath a tree in their lawn, peeking above the grass. I recalled the dog’s graying face and baggy eyes.
I pictured the girl the night before, above the pet’s heaving belly on the sterile counter, the lapse between breaths growing longer and longer. Maybe they’d been told the little dog suffered an incurable disease, or organ failure. More likely he was just old.
I saw the girl’s face, turned away, resisting full awareness of what was going on. Her bone white shoes would hang from her mother’s arm, brushing the woman’s sides as she held her daughter against her shoulder. Given her age, it would have been one of her first close encounters with death: a shock that she couldn’t put into context, that she wouldn’t comprehend until the ride home from the vet’s office, beside an empty crate in the backseat.
I remembered the girl before tragedy had struck, her feet gliding across the lawn, unknowing. I remembered her mother guiding her, the cross ready and waiting, hidden from view.
Worse than my failure to recognize her illness, I couldn’t even recall her in health. I thought back to specific days and events before the endless series of hospital visits, but was never able to remember whether her hair parted to the side or center before it started to fall out, or the way her hands had looked before the skin began to thin and reveal the delicate blue veins underneath.
It’s an unshakeable guilt considering my career, which relies almost entirely upon recognizing details that others miss. Specifically, I study forensic photographic evidence. It began in college when an industry veteran identified my unusual talent for catching hidden details, features so mundane that they’re invisible to the average human eye. I was quickly developed through courses, clinics and classes led by forensic specialists and crime scene photographers, even flown from continent to continent, all in the name of honing my singular, bizarre specialty.
Now, I’m paid to analyze, categorize, number, alphabetize and index whatever is placed in front of me: lurid photos from crime scenes, gas station surveillance videos, photos snapped offhandedly at a child’s birthday party that have since become classified evidence. Eventually the shots are all sorted into the same metal containers, arranged by case file, and hidden behind identical white tabs. I’ve learned to become a sort of machine, distancing myself from the violence and sifting the images presented to me into their discreet components, void of emotion or consequence.
Sometimes though, in the face of a uniquely horrific event, our senses and natural abilities fail us.
Throughout the last weeks of my mother’s life, her body spent after fighting the poisons that for months had been administered as treatments, she remained composed. She went gracefully as always, in her sleep. I woke to a room full of nurses, slumped in a chair beside her bed, my hand clenched in a fist of bed sheets. I was avoiding the inevitable to the last, shamefully unprepared.
Since her death, I’ve tuned in to my surroundings, introducing the intense observation I typically reserve for work into my daily life - as if that could prevent future catastrophe, or somehow compensate for my previous, unthinkable oversight. I often slip into daydream on my way home, watching the houses slide past with their even white siding and identical plots of land. I can capture minute details in one go even though I only see each scene in passing.
One of the houses, the largest in our modest neighborhood, always stands out. It was built recently, shortly following my mother’s passing, massive and immaculate. The family who lives there has a young girl whom I often see tumbling around the yard, the child just as tidy as her surroundings in a neat jumper and white shoes tied with identical bows. A potbellied beagle teeters behind her, his gate no doubt slowed by many years racing to catch fallen crumbs.
“Pristine” is the word that often comes to mind when I see that house. “Predictable.”
Driving by one evening, I saw the girl trailing in a jagged line on tiptoe behind her mother. She appeared to float, weightless; her toes seemed to barely graze the ground. Her mother guided her toward the front door with a hand gently clasped around the girl’s finger. If not for her mother’s hand, it seemed as if the girl might float off into the evening air.
I glimpsed a pair of shoes hanging over a telephone wire in the lawn behind them. They were deathly still, stuck there indefinitely – scuffed up tennis sneakers that would have known no place in that home, surely thrown there by some passerby. I imagined the thrower’s shoulder muscles rolling back in preparation, a hand closed firmly around the thin laces. Then the calculated release, the shoes flying to their destination. It wasn’t luck, really, that landed them squarely on the wire: the force and direction of the pitch, the nature of the wind that day, the weight of the ragged sneakers, all determined the end result. The tips of the laces dangled limply now, struck into inevitable immobility, thin grey lines outlined in the sky.
Weeks later, driving by the house, the usual scene unfolded but the Beagle was missing. It was the first day since I could remember that he hadn’t been outside when I passed. A small, home-made cross already jutted from the ground beneath a tree in their lawn, peeking above the grass. I recalled the dog’s graying face and baggy eyes.
I pictured the girl the night before, above the pet’s heaving belly on the sterile counter, the lapse between breaths growing longer and longer. Maybe they’d been told the little dog suffered an incurable disease, or organ failure. More likely he was just old.
I saw the girl’s face, turned away, resisting full awareness of what was going on. Her bone white shoes would hang from her mother’s arm, brushing the woman’s sides as she held her daughter against her shoulder. Given her age, it would have been one of her first close encounters with death: a shock that she couldn’t put into context, that she wouldn’t comprehend until the ride home from the vet’s office, beside an empty crate in the backseat.
I remembered the girl before tragedy had struck, her feet gliding across the lawn, unknowing. I remembered her mother guiding her, the cross ready and waiting, hidden from view.