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by pixelpig

Comment by salmiakki:
So sorry for your loss. Very difficult to comment on such a personal journey. Thank you for sharing it must have been very difficult to put this together

Number 9
by pixelpig

Comment by herfotoman:
The master

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by pixelpig

Comment by posthumous:
sorry for your loss... this was indeed hard to watch, as hard news is. you've expressed all my horror at hospitals, and the photos make it impossible to ignore your points.

Number 9
by pixelpig

Comment by wbanning:
Wow. I just don't give 10's very often. This one was an immediate 10 looking for the Spinal Tap amp that goes to 11. Congratulations!

Number 9
by pixelpig

Comment by NikonJeb:
Out-freakin'-standing! You not only hit it out of the park, you hit it over a four lane highway and through the window of the abandoned Chinese restaurant next door! Way to go and congrats on a well-deserved blue!

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by pixelpig

Comment by insteps:
Powerful essay that makes you appreciate life. At a certain point life starts to take away more than it gives.

�Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be...�

-- William Wordsworth

So hard to comment on your essay. We must cherish what we have and carry on. My thoughts are with you.

Message edited by author 2016-01-02 19:03:46.

Number 9
by pixelpig

Comment by Ivory:
Congratulations on your blue ribbon. Beautiful entry!

Number 9
by pixelpig

Comment by Marfun:
Nice sense of depth. Congrats on your ribbon.

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by pixelpig

Comment by mariuca:
I do not think that we need a warning to look at this heartfelt essay. It is about life, and death is a part of life. It is regarded though like a failure, like a disease, like something that needs to be ignored and never ever mentioned, something that happens to "others". We show endless pictures with new born babies and stay away from old people.

What you show us here reminded me of a recent book "Being Mortal", by Dr. Atul Gawande. As it's described on the cover, "Dr. Gawande tackles the hardest challenge of his profession: how medicine can not only improve life but also the process of its ending.
Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming birth, injury, and infectious disease from harrowing to manageable. But in the inevitable condition of aging and death, the goals of medicine seem too frequently to run counter to the interest of the human spirit."

You made a great tribute to your mother and your essay is a deep cry, hopefully not in the desert.
I read a while ago the memories of Dag Hammarskjold and there is this sentence that is worth mentioning:

"No choice is uninfluenced by the way in which the personality regards its destiny and the body its death. In the last analysis, it is our conception of death which decides our answers to all the questions that life puts us."

There is something that struck me in your series of photographs - there is a illumination of your mother's face that makes even more powerful the mystery of life and death.

I salute you for your photo essay.

Message edited by author 2016-01-01 19:35:20.

Number 9
by pixelpig

Comment by patches:
Congratulations on your Blue Ribbon!!! I just loved this one - it was my personal pick for the Blue