Death

It looked like a bug was dying.

And it upset me. Badly.

No matter where I looked along the eastern flank of Lake Michigan, I could not corral my eyes into obedience. They kept straying to the ripples in the water. The last pieces of a life ending.

It haunts me.

There was nothing I could do, though to many there was nothing worth doing, and that haunts me even more. The bug was too far out in hypothermic waters already. I would have had to swim, fully clothed, past the lapping waves to save it and by the time I got there, it would have been too late anyway.

The bug on its back, frantically buzzing its wings to escape the water, was going to die.

Everything dies. Everything. But it's the small things, the things fighting against a force that is calloused and unfair that bothers me the most.

It was cold and wicked the way the first sunsets of autumn always are and Halloween was breathing down the day's neck. The sand on the beach wasn't cold enough to sting yet, not deep below the surface, but the wind was biting.

Ruthless.

As the Great Lakes tend to be.

My husband and I were on the beach, happy to be in the cold because time spent together was always an adventure, but this was an upsetting thing. A quietly desperate thing sitting out on the water in front of us.

Here for the sunset, caught by the death.

Death is like Venus, it's bright in our eyes because of its proximity. We are helplessly drawn to it and if we manage to turn our back to Death, it will gather our attention without issue. Without effort. Without wasting a single second. Death demands respect the way she demands silence, with an unwavering fist.

Even here, with my camera in my lap waiting for the sunset, Death demanded that I pay her the necessary focus. She demanded I see her.

Something hit the water hard. It cracked through the silence, sneaking between two gentle, lapping waves. A bug hit the water. Why? Who knows? The buzzing started immediately. Odd, then upsetting.

And then the sound repeated in my head like a scream. Echoing, echoing, echoing.

It was so like photography for me, not a quick bite from a bug but a long, echoing cry from the void. Every photo taken is one moment I cannot have stolen from my memory. One moment I refuse to allow time to take. And this was just one more cry into the fathomless void around me. But there is no comfort in taking the pictures because the truth remains.

Everything dies.

The bug. The squirrel. The man. Everything dies. Not everything is remembered. Even fewer are documented. This bug though, has been branded into my memory, into a tangible picture, and given even to you. A bug, dying on the water, given such a pedestal.

And my photography obsesses over capturing the moments the world forgets. It obsesses like I do over the fleeting nature of life and the things everyone else misses and forgets to document. There's horror there, isn't there? In knowing the world is missing everything. In seeing the death and seeing its unimportance. There's horror there.

Similar to my writing then, I want to horrify and set ill at ease with something so mundane it is hard to call it horror.

The bug dies on a lake. He buzzes his wings for minutes. No help is coming. I am a witness to a death I could not stop. But the bug doesn't know that. He doesn't know that anyone wants to help. He doesn't know that calming down for one second may help. He knows only panic and the jaws of a death that could not release.

It happens all the time.

But it's terrifying, isn't it?

To be that bug is terrifying. And we are all one bad roll of the dice away from dying with the thought that no matter how we struggle or cry, no one is coming to help.

No one.

Not even the photographer.