Go In Peace

The title "Go in Peace" arose after we asked mother if she wanted to pray. She always respond with a hoarse "yes." Dad would lead us in the 23rd Psalm: "Even though we walk in the shadow of darkness, there is nothing we shall fear," and the Our Father. When the prayer need, my sister, Sue, leaned over and gave mother a hug, saying, "Go in Peace."

Immediately I realised that was the right thing to do, and invited my father and sister, Judy, to do the same. We were so relieved after we commissioned mother to leave us, we had a pastrami sandwich picnic in her hospice room.

No photo project has touched me as deeply as documenting my mother's death from cancer and the care my father and sisters provided for her. Ironically as she was dying, close friends asked me to photograph the birth of a child. The two events became inexorably linked in my mind as I went from life beginning to life ending. As Ecclesiastes says, there is a time to be born and a time to die. Amen.

Don Doll, S.J.