When Oprah Winfrey was living with her grandmother in rural Mississippi, they slept in the same bed together. One evening, she wakes up to her grandfather's "hands around my grandmother’s neck and she is screaming.” Her grandmother got away but she devised a plan that would alarm her in the future if he came back: tin cans around a chair in front of the door.
How do things we see affect us, especially if we shouldn’t have seen them? Whether it was because we should have been protected from or because we were too close to something we shouldn’t. Who do we become when we see something we shouldn’t? Are we an interloper? A nosy parker like Gladys Kravitz? A Witness? Or an accomplice or peeping tom?
Photo still of Grace Kelly and Jimmy Stewart, nosy parkers who see something they shouldn’t in the film Rear Window
What about circumstance (“wrong place, wrong time” kind of thing) or intention? Do either matter?
Or maybe when we see something we shouldn’t, that image simply becomes part of us.
“And that is how we slept every night,” Oprah later shared. “I’m sleeping, I always slept with, listening for the cans. Listening for what happens if that doorknob moves.”
Tell me what you think changes when we see something we shouldn’t. Or maybe we don’t change at all. Tell me who you think we become when we see something we shouldn’t. Or maybe we don’t change at all. What do you think?
Yes. This is a great question and prompt for a longer writing session. Both in Latin America: I saw the bodies of two murdered American girls in Costa Rica. I wasn’t photographing, but the police noticed I had a camera. They’d run out of film. They asked me if I had any film. I was holding one of the first commercial digital cameras by Nikon and explained it could take 200 photos. They lifted the police tape and invited me onto the scene to photograph the evidence. Then I rode with them to the forensics lab in Limón, uploaded my photos, and taught them how to use their imaging software. I learned the girls’ names before their parents knew they were dead, because their belongings, including driver’s licenses, were strewn on the ground (and worse things I won’t mention). My photo appeared in some newspapers.
A few years later in Nicaragua, I saw a man convulse and die just after being struck by a vehicle while riding a bike. I recorded the gory details in my journal, also which I’ll keep to myself.
I can’t think of many other experiences that are both so highly unnatural and also privileged. “Privileged” in a sense that you were not only given access to death in a protected way but also granted an opportunity to reflect on it . I can’t think how an experience like that wouldn’t change you. Thank you so much for sharing this Michelle.
I think the moment we become someone who has seen a dead person deepens our humanity and our sense of our own mortality. Recently I saw my father lying in state. That was intense.
Yes. This is a great question and prompt for a longer writing session. Both in Latin America: I saw the bodies of two murdered American girls in Costa Rica. I wasn’t photographing, but the police noticed I had a camera. They’d run out of film. They asked me if I had any film. I was holding one of the first commercial digital cameras by Nikon and explained it could take 200 photos. They lifted the police tape and invited me onto the scene to photograph the evidence. Then I rode with them to the forensics lab in Limón, uploaded my photos, and taught them how to use their imaging software. I learned the girls’ names before their parents knew they were dead, because their belongings, including driver’s licenses, were strewn on the ground (and worse things I won’t mention). My photo appeared in some newspapers.
A few years later in Nicaragua, I saw a man convulse and die just after being struck by a vehicle while riding a bike. I recorded the gory details in my journal, also which I’ll keep to myself.
These visions remain with me.
I can’t think of many other experiences that are both so highly unnatural and also privileged. “Privileged” in a sense that you were not only given access to death in a protected way but also granted an opportunity to reflect on it . I can’t think how an experience like that wouldn’t change you. Thank you so much for sharing this Michelle.
I think the moment we become someone who has seen a dead person deepens our humanity and our sense of our own mortality. Recently I saw my father lying in state. That was intense.
Completely agree with you, Michelle. I’ve experienced Something similar.
And my condolences on the death of your father.