Room for a View

Raising the Dead
by Lorna Tychostup

I’ve lived death all my life. What has become an intimate relationship began at age six when my grandfather came to die with us. It was a short stay. Wrapped in a blanket and whisked to my other grandparents’ home the night he died—the child should not see this act—removal of the dead—my Nana woke me the following day. “Big Grandpa died last night,” she told me. “He’s up in heaven. We’re going to see him later.” “Mmm, big day ahead,” I thought as she dressed me in my Sunday finest. “Will I get to see God?” There was no God, just rooms of towering flower arrangements which poured out onto the street along with their heavy perfume. Big Grandpa was laid out in a dark wooden box looking a little stiff. At the urging of my other grandfather, I stepped up onto the kneeling bier to get a closer look. “Kiss him goodbye,” he said. As my lips touched the once warm now icy cold surface that was his hand, a bolt of lightning streaked through my body. Knocked backwards, I looked around to see if anyone had noticed. My living grandfather stood next to me, tears streaming down his face—a man is crying?—obviously had not seen the profound result of his request.

Weeks later, asleep in my retrieved bed—Big Grandpa had borrowed it in those days before his journey—I felt warm breathing and loving stroking on my hand. “It must be the dog,” said my dream state. “But the dog isn’t allowed upstairs,” a progression of conscious thought suddenly laced with terror said. “It must be the bogeyman who lives under my bed!” An eternity later, my eyes finally opened to see a blurred face floating in white fog above me. “So this is God,” I thought pulling the blanket up close to my neck, keeping my hands safe from any further intrusion. Death has intruded into my life many times since.

Most recently when a young friend demanded I spend intimate time with her as she approached her leukemic death. Twenty-five years of a too-short life full of foreign travel and artistic expression through writing and photography we reviewed together, amid blood transfusions and impending death. Her will entrusted me and a beloved aunt with all of her negatives, for the purpose of future printing. Included in the will was the setting up of a fund into which all proceeds from the sale of her photographs would go. The recipients of this money will be her two young female cousins, for the purposes of travel once they turn 18—it must be outside the US, and I prefer Latin America.

And so we are preparing for the first showing of her photographs since her death. It will feature self-portraits and hang in April, the month of her birth. And I have been spending intimate time with her once again, this time in the darkroom, bringing her images to life. This is not the washing of the body or the choosing of the casket. This is the intimate connection of my eyes looking through hers. There is something about how a photographer’s photographs define their life... Stark landscapes, deep contrasts, a laughing child’s face, empty shoes facing an open door, swirling bodies beneath the water’s surface, a lone table in a place temporarily called home... This task has produced visitations with her in a way never experienced before. Words never spoken, conversations never had, understanding and realization long after the fact now flow easily from the enlarger to the developer. I go into the darkroom and she is there with me This great dialogue begins and the words flow much more readily than tears because there is all this work to do a labor of love my words try to capture her images as I raise her once again a child who was more of a mother to me than most It is such a power I feel bringing her back alive... Will anyone else be able to see this depth and contrast which fills the tray?

As luck would have it, an old friend visited recently from California. A most amazing photographer and poet [see Max Schwartz’s photo layout on page 22], this holy man spoke with me about how so many he has photographed over the years are now dead. Something is happening, he said, I have all these photos of people who have since died... Painting a streak of common ground for us to stand on—me, Max, my friend—his words have helped me through this difficult beginning of a lifelong commitment. Yet, he speaks about photographs that he has actually taken. These I spend my time with are hers and I am charged with bringing them, and thereby her, to life. There is that moment of focusing it is like no other the sharp clarity bringing this contrast to a pinnacle a clear and brilliant line appears and the image begins to breathe I watch the process is beyond me beyond my physicality she lives she breathes will they see her in the day of light? The dead continue to live. Either in the seeds they have planted within those they have touched in this existence called living, or in the art expressions they have left behind. And so the relationship continues.

The photographs of Jen Folster, “A Life in the Making,” will be exhibited at The Main Street Bistro in New Paltz during the month of April.