Waterfalls

Rose-Anne Shaw

View more of her stunning photographs on her website.

Yeah. So. My dog just vomited all over my yoga mat. It’s not just any yoga mat. He vomited on my other yoga mat a few times. Yes, I am trying to get better at closing the door to that room. And yes, I wish he would vomit on the hard wood floors rather than the mat or the bed (which has happened twice now). This yoga mat is special. My friend Rose just died. She was an amazing photographer. When I saw her in February down at the farm, she was so excited to show me the yoga mat she’d just had made with a photograph of hers printed into the fibers. It’s a long waterfall shot, hemmed in forest green. Perfect Rose.

After she died, I tried to think of something of hers I might be able to have, something her boys wouldn’t be interested in. Something I could use frequently in which to keep her spirit alive and keep me in close company to my friend. I thought of offering to buy her camera. We had similar Nikon cameras and being able to use hers would have been a beautiful way for me to honor her. But it was ruined by the tide on the day she died. And, that kind of item, with so much significance to Rose, might be better left in the hands of her two sons. I was conscious also, of not wanting to enter the strange territory that sometimes follows a death, when people occasionally come to resemble vultures or magpies: picking over the leavings in search of glinting treasures. I only wanted a way to invoke Rose in my daily life. Whenever I visit the farm, I only have to walk past the crib or through the fields to the beach and beach hut, over the rocks to the rockpools or across the stretch of sand to the cave, to think of her. But I don’t live there anymore. Which is something to come to terms with in itself. A few days later, I remembered Rose’s yoga mat, and her sons were happy for me to have it.

Rocco vomited in one long thin stream that followed the course of Rose’s stunning waterfall, taken somewhere on the west coast I would guess. It was a place she loved to venture on photography missions, alone or in the company of goldminers and lobster-divers. Sometimes she would be working those jobs too, but mostly those jobs were only ways in, opportunities for her to be immersed in a remote place for days or weeks at a time.

I was angry when I discovered Rocco’s welcome-home-from-work gift. I cleaned it up (it came off pretty well, currently no stain but let’s see how it dries) and explained to him in clear English that I’m absolutely happy for him to use the hardwood floors rather than the mat or the bed. He allowed a short amount of time for looking sorry and apologetic, eyes large, ears flat, tail curled inwards, and then commenced his stout little waggle twinkle-toed dance for food. I had to imagine Rose laughing. Dogs will be dogs, she might say. But at the same time, I know the mat was precious to her. It was an image of hers at large in the world. It may have represented a way she could encourage her art into the hands of friends and fans, and at the very least be a daily nudge to keep going. Keep taking photos, keep sifting for hours through the thousands of photographs looking for the one or the series that might be enough to stop someone in their tracks and get them to look. The waterfall in itself is a potent symbol for abundance, infinity, bounty, endless cycles, and of a connection with both land and water and our reliance on their systems for life. Absolutely potent. Absolutely Rose.

But she would laugh. She recently took in a stray kitten, maybe six or nine months ago. The kitten’s name is Kitten. At her funeral, her son Brendan spoke well for a long time. I’m impressed with how well he was able to speak at such a time and I’m grateful for it because I learned more about Rose. I’ve only known her for just over three years and living away from the farm much of the time, we didn’t get a lot of time together. Brendan said Rose always named animals that way — Kitten, Dog, Duck, Pig. Rose did this not because she was lazy, he said, but because she held deep respect for the independence and wild spirit of each animal. This fit perfectly with the Rose I knew. She was so much herself that it didn’t take long for anyone who cared to see who she was. She wore her being on her sleeve. Kitten is a wild little cat. She had a hungry start on the farm and slowly grew to trust Rose until daily she accompanied her on long walks to the beach through the field and over the rocks. Kitten stayed with her when she died. My mom’s taking care of her now.

I hope Rose is laughing about the mat now, somewhere where material possessions and bodies and art and income don’t mean so much or weigh so heavy on our hearts as they tend to do sometimes. I hope she is free of every burden she ever carried. When I got her mat home, I laid it on the floor. I pushed my way through a short and too intensive yoga class (it’s been a few months since I had a regular practice) and then turned it off and just laid there. I thought of Rose and imagined her voice. I cried. I talked to her. I told her I didn’t realize how important she was to me until she died. That I’d taken our friendship for granted. Expected she would just always be there. That I was sorry. That I wished I’d had more time with her. Maybe grief is selfish. Maybe I am. It’s much too easy to take home for granted. And Rose had become part of my home. She’d slipped in quietly and with so much ease and good company that I completely forgot all about what it was like before she was there. Rose had that way about her. She was strong but unassuming. Forthright but quiet. She had the knack of being there whenever you desired her company and then slipping quietly out to be alone, to be out in the open with the stars or the moon or the waves or hidden in a flax-blind watching the birds.

She wouldn’t want me to punish Rocco. And that’s not who I am anyway. Rose and I shared that kinship with living things, with the wild. She’d want me to scold him dramatically and then cuddle his fat little body and forgive him. She’d want to me get down on my hands and knees to scrub the mat because maybe the world is better viewed from all fours. She’d laugh and then she’d pour me a wine and we’d talk about everything we wanted to make and wonder how the hell we were going to go about it. The mat will have to serve this purpose now, a place to go for her company, to think of her, to worry over art and social media and money and what the world is becoming the farther we get from our wild roots. I’m grateful for it. Grateful for the three human years we spent in one another’s company, grateful to have witnessed her wild human energy and to hear some of her stories.

I’m thirty-seven. My Dad died when I was thirty. I’m not unfamiliar with people passing away. But Rose’s death was sudden and unexpected, and it’s shaken me. She was too young, had too much more to do. It’s unfair and I’ve been angry and frustrated by it. I’m reassessing areas of my life I thought were solid and areas I know need work (like being absolutely crap at emailing my loved ones). I think she would have been angry to die, and I can’t help but imagine her last moments that way despite her dying in the middle of doing what she loved in a place that she loved. My spiritual framework for death is abstract — that death is another iteration of who we are here, now. It doesn’t account for the sudden and unexpected. It doesn’t account for anger, for regret, for unfinished work, for the years more she could have spent living.

What choice do I have but to keep going back to the mat? To let my body lead me in this life’s work of reassessing, of coming to terms, of grieving and honoring. That’s where I’m at today, not working through poses on my mat but on my hands and knees there nonetheless, scrubbing away the stain that might mar my beautiful friends beautiful work. Because I can’t stop her from dying, but I can clean the mat, I can close the damn door when I’m out of the house, and I can tell you about it so that if I die, somebody knows what I was thinking, what I was feeling. Because once we’re gone, it’s all questions and nobody, nowhere, knows if we’ll ever get answers.