Traces, rituals, the uncanny, and the path Nancy always insisted on taking

I made the rose pictures when Nancy was still alive, she was with me, sitting patiently beside me, as I stopped to take pictures on our evening walks around the town we lived in, I didn’t know then why I was photographing roses, I’m still not sure, but it probably has something to do with love.

Most days Nancy decided where we would go on our walks, left or right out the driveway, down Avondale or out the Kildalkey Road, Loman or Haggard Street, through the church grounds or by the schools, which foot-worn grassy paths to take through the Porch Fields and one in particular that she always insisted on following.

In 2015, around the time I started working on my project The Red Ribbon, I tied one, a red ribbon, to Nancy’s collar, the superstition or traditional belief behind having something red tied to you was that it acted as a form of protection, every new collar had a red ribbon attached, I left Nancy’s collar on her when I buried her.

The night Nancy died I promised her I’d light a candle in my window every night for three months and five days because that’s how old she was when I got her, I hoped the candle would help her find her way back to me.

Maybe I am morbid, but I always thought I would cremate Nancy when she died and bury her ashes with me when I died, but when it happened I couldn’t, I couldn’t hand her over to someone, anyone, I couldn’t be without her. Before I buried her I cut a little bit of hair off of her right ear to put in a heart shaped locket, I haven’t found the perfect one yet so I keep her hair in a ziplock bag under my pillow.

It was strange how I ended up getting Nancy, I had been looking to adopt a rescue all those years ago, wire-haired fox terriers are hard to come by and the chances of getting one from a rescue are pretty slim, there was one once and I stayed up until two in the morning filling in an online form, but I never heard back, it was my partner at the time, James, that found the advertisement selling wire-haired fox terrier puppies, I remember the picture so well, three or four little puppies held in a bunch on someone’s lap, they were all male and I was looking for a female, because James’s dog Hank was a boy, I don’t know what possessed me to phone, but I did and when I told the elderly gentleman I was looking for a female he said he had one, she wasn’t advertised, on July 5th 2010 we drove from Wexford to Tipperary and it was love at first sight, the elderly couple were selling her brothers for four hundred and fifty Euros and wanted one hundred Euros for Nancy, she wasn’t registered, I handed the money to the elderly man and he said to give it to his wife, that she took care of all the cash dealings, she handed me back a fiver, good luck money.

There’s a briar on the path in the Porch Fields that Nancy always insisted on taking, it crosses the path, I think she used to jump over it or maybe I used to stand on it, I can’t remember.

One of Nancy’s eyes, her right I think, had started to go a little cloudy, it depended on how you viewed it, sometimes it looked better, sometimes worse, the vet said it was ok. I think her other eye went cloudy the week before she died, my Mum’s friend Jane communicated with Nancy and Nancy told her she’d had a stroke and lost sight in one of her eyes, Jane said something about Nancy exaggerating her pain and I dismissed everything Jane said because of that one comment, because Nancy was a real trooper, you’d never know there was anything wrong with her, but she had a clot, so the stroke makes sense, and I did notice her eye, but wasn’t sure if it was the already cloudy eye or not. Guilt and regret.

I used to have dozens of photos of Nancy on the wall of my office/studio/spare bedroom behind my table and laptop, I took them all down when I started the menopause project so I could use the wall for it, I put my favourites back up in a corner, this is all that’s left on the main wall, strips of missing paint and bits of tape I didn’t remove.

After Nancy went I started to notice dandelion seed heads everywhere, it felt a bit like Nancy was still around, one day I picked up Niall Mac Coitir’s book Ireland’s Wild Plants and looked up dandelions, here’s the last sentence of their description ‘Dandelion is a member of the daisy family, the Asteraceae.’ I smiled because I was going to call Nancy Aster before I met her.

Time is weird, sometimes it’s like it was only yesterday when Nancy was put to sleep and other times it feels so long ago, so far away, she feels so far away.

I’m still looking for you in the light.