Originally read at the Celebration of Caleb on Nov. 18th at All Souls Gathering, Shelburne, VT.
My friend Erick, who grew up with Caleb and me in Charlotte, says the most important things in life are the relationships we build, the experiences we have, and the things we leave behind.
I developed a passion for photography on a ’trip of a lifetime’ with Caleb in Alaska,
where he gave me a hard time for carrying an old film camera skiing, camping and shooting in otherwise impractical places for an old film camera.
As my affinity for the camera grew, I discovered a British artist and photographer, David Hockney. In the late 80’s, Hockney became captivated by the gap he saw between photographs and the human perspective. He developed an approach to collage, assembling many photos of the same subject. Taken from slightly different angles, they form a new view, an unfamiliar and messy, but undeniably rich perspective – more than a photograph but not quite reality. He called these pieces ‘joiners’.
I think when we lose someone, we turn to stories – our relationship with them, our experiences becoming the things they've left behind. Over the last few weeks, I’ve had a chance to hear and read stories from people, many of you are probably here, who I’ve never met but cherish Caleb as I do. Even my 75 year old cousin, to this day, will ask every friend I bring to the Maine coast whether they were “the paddle board guy” who paddled 3 miles of open Atlantic with just a dry bag and a pair of shorts.
These stories are snapshots, moments from one perspective. Like a photograph, they’re flat and only two dimensional. But taken together, like David Hockney’s joiners, these stories begin to form a jumbled collage – a messy, not quite tangible but somehow three dimensional portrait of someone we love and have lost.
So thank you Audrey, Trevor and Randy, and MaryAnne and Winslow, and everyone here for the chance to share and assemble these snapshots from our too short time with Caleb.
