A personal journey home by Michael Allen Blair
Last week I embarked on a personal journey that pushed me to
my limits emotionally, physically and professionally. When I learned that the 2012 National Press
Photographers Association Multimedia Immersion workshop was being hosted at
Syracuse University, roughly 35 miles from where I grew up in Sherrill, NY., I
knew I needed to attend. You see, my relationship with my hometown has been
strained lately to say the least.
When my mother passed away in March from stomach cancer, I
lost my last physical connection to the city where I grew up. Grasping for something
to hang on to, I turned to my childhood memories and the many good times I had
growing up in New York’s smallest city. One such memory involved a surrogate big
brother of sorts who used to play baseball with me in my yard. He was my
sister’s boyfriend for a short time. I always admired him and thought how nice
it would be to have a big brother like him especially in the absence of having
a father present. As kids, we grew older and drifted apart, then became great
friends in our adult life only to drift apart again. His name is Nathan and he had such a
profound impact on me that I named my first born son after him.
As I prepared to attend the multimedia workshop, I started
to contemplate the possibilities of
focusing on a story from the area in which I grew up. I reached out to
Nate and his wife Toni to see if they would be willing to host me for a couple
days as I tried to explore the ghost of my past and the technologies of my
future. As always, they were gracious
and welcomed me into their beautiful farmhouse in Vernon, NY.
I was always in awe of the success of the couple just a few
years my senior. They seemingly had everything going for them, great jobs, a
beautiful family, a grand estate with horses and a sprawling property in which
to grow the seeds of their future. I was
a little surprised when they agreed to allow me to focus my lens on their life
together and the love they have sewn in the once fertile soil of the horse
farm.
You see, Nate is a first generation farmer, he didn’t
inherit the farm from his parents as many young men do. He did however
seemingly inherit glioblastoma brain cancer, the same kind of cancer that
killed both of his parents, just years apart.
When I talked with his wife Toni about telling their story
she had indicated that the tumor was shrinking and I arrived at the farm with a
sense of hope and optimism for my friends. On the second day of filming, Toni
returned home and informed me that the cancer was terminal and that my friend
had little hope of survival. Suddenly what I had envisioned as a story about
renewed hope and optimism was turning into a story about loss and despair. The video below is a testament to their love
and struggle against this horrible disease which has systematically picked away
at them like a vulture feeding on the skeleton that was their idyllic life
together.
As I drove away from the empty horse barn that day, I was
left with a new sense of what’s important in life. It’s not the things we surround ourselves with in life
or our physical connection to a place, it’s the love we have in our lives and
our memories of that place called home that are important.