Living forwards

How photographing birds helps me face adversity

- TIM BECKERLING

On 5 January last year, everything changed. After 16 years of fighting with superhuman courage and inspiring grace, my wife Chantell took her final breath while holding my hand in the ICU. You might think that with a prognosis as severe as hers we would have been better prepared for that moment. Perhaps she was, being leagues braver and more enlightened than me, but I have never been less ready for anything. The contract we had was to live every day as if it were our last. That led to an incredibly rich life, extracting the maximum joy and appreciation from even the smallest moments. We laughed all the time. We travelled South Africa, then lived abroad and began learning a new language, all while making running repairs to her ‘uncooperative biology’, which she treated as an irritation rather than the death sentence it was touted to be. We explored more of Spain than most Spaniards we met, during an unprecedented time of travel restrictions and invisible threats that would have dissuaded most people. But not Chantell. And if she was in, so was I, always. We lived a hundred lives condensed into a few incredible years.

As I crouched next to the hospital bed holding her hand, I read the words tattooed in flowing script upon her wrist. I’d read them many times before, but for the first time they felt like they were meant just for me: ‘Never give up’.

We had a grand plan before returning home from Madrid, yearning for some time in nature after three exciting, but trying years. We made a list of the places we’d go, starting with a month in the Kruger Park, then Botswana. A Suzuki Jimny configured as a micro-overlander, we agreed, would go anywhere and would serve our needs.