Caroline Thompson

Death can come at any time– it can be sudden, shocking, and is almost always devastating. In describing the death of her husband due to a heart attack, Joan Didion said, “Life changes in an instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends”. But what about death in a state of imminence? What about that loss we have time to dread?

Leaning on the Everlasting Arms is a series about anticipatory grief; it is also about my own grandparents, my relationship to them and their relationship with each other. The work involves photographs taken during various visits over a six-month period that illustrate the effects of my grandmother’s declin- ing health and the necessity for loved ones to become caretakers. Featured as well are several writings that offer my reflections on those visits and provide deeper insight into my relationship with them. The creation of this project is rooted in a deep empathy that revealed itself gradually as I got older, but was fully unearthed during a trip to visit my family in England. I have grown up surrounded by photographs of the English countryside, watching home videos from many visits to the UK, and hearing countless stories of times gone by. But over the years, my grandmother’s health has declined, to the point now where she would not be able to handle the strain of the trip. I had known this but not fully grasped just how devastating their situation was until one night at my great uncle’s house, after having a long conversation about the very real possibility of my grandparents never seeing their family again. In recent years, my family have repeatedly heard the argument from my grandfather that they will finally do those things they’ve been meaning to do once my grandmother “gets put right”. It seemed that there was always an ailment to recover from, an injury that needed to heal - but it has become apparent that there will not be another upswing.

I began to feel the heavy weight of sadness and guilt and panic. Although they're both still very much alive, I cried for my own loss of them, as well as their loss of themselves as individuals and of each other as partners in life. I could not stop thinking that they simply did not deserve this ending that was unfolding.

But nature does not consider what is fair, just as mourning does not always begin when it is supposed to. This project has revealed itself as a form of healing for me– it has helped me to confront something that I have avoided for a long time. Grief is nonsensical and endlessly cruel. My hope is that someone might see this series and feel understood, and perhaps some solace in mutual sadness.

I found myself repeatedly looking at Kaylynn Deveny’s work, Larry Sultan’s Pictures from Home series, Colin Gray’s book In Sickness and in Health, and Christopher Nunn’s Falling into the Day. I was also heavily influenced by Joan Didion’s Blue Nights– it is devastating and gorgeous.

Definitely not. I think my reason for making the project has remained the same throughout the entire process, but it was initially going to be a series of portraits of myself and my other family members photoshopped to look old. It was meant to be a source of empathy through caricature, but I struggled with it– I now know that struggle was caused by the fact that I was making the concept too easy to swallow, for the audience as well as myself.