Lance Shields
Photography

Remembering Seal Rock

My father Bill has retired in a beach community in Victoria, British Columbia called Cordova Bay. He lives with my step-mom Barb, who looks after him since he suffers from late-stage Alzheimer's. He has short term memory loss but still retains his cheerful and sometimes grumpy personality. He enjoys spending several hours a day sitting on his patio and staring out on Cordova Bay and across at the San Juan Islands. Each day as the tide goes out a rock island emerges in the middle of his view, which he calls Seal Rock. Bill thoroughly enjoys watching the seagulls, Blue Herons, and the occasional Bald Eagle land on the rock. He also walks on the beach when the tide is out and discovers treasures left by the sea, filling his beach house with them. When the tide comes in the island slowly fades like a memory. Yet there’s always an expectation that it will come back the next day. Soon, Bill and Barb are planning to move down the beach to a simpler and easier to navigate home. The view will be similar in many ways but Seal Rock won’t be part of it. I wonder what my father will think. Will he remember Seal Rock and ask why it isn’t part of his view anymore? Or will it fade from memory and the new view become what he knows? I know I’ll always remember him gazing out on Seal Rock as it changes with the tide.