Before the Visitation

Canon EOS 20D

This photo was taken just before I attended the funerary visitation for my great-aunt, Ellen Salina, who, after a long and determined battle with muscular dystrophy, passed on suddenly, March 1. She was 84.

This shot was taken March 3 from a CN rail embankment at the southern city limits of Windsor, near the Walker/Provincial/401 interchange. My last, self-imposed assignment for the day was to get a shot looking west down the CN corridor for a story about the Detroit River Tunnel Partnership and the binational committee on the Detroit River International Crossing.

As I stood on the embankment, waiting for the 6:24 p.m. sunset, I was thinking about my aunt Ellen, her sister Cathy Cameron (my late grandmother), and all seven Kelly sisters of Clelland, Scotland (in descending order Roseanne, Catherine, Mary, Ellen, Jane, Annie and Grace).

From those seven women, an enormous extended family has grown across Canada, the UK and the US. The family is tight in its own peculiar and emotional way--all these Salinas, Camerons, Horokys, Collinses, LeClairs, Cannons, Wilsons, Shewchuks, McDonalds, Wilkeses, Larkins, Stewarts... it's difficult to keep track.

I was thinking of how lucky I am, with a young and growing family of my own, to be a part of something so vast, and while I stood there, in the cold, on the train tracks, I noticed this single frond of prairie grass growing out of the kudzu and bracken on the side of the embankment.

This shot was my last one of the day, and I dedicate it to my great-aunt Ellen, and my entire extended family.