An Ongoing Memorial Celebration

Jimmy and Jane Edmonds searching for the memory of their son in Vietnam

As I reviewed the photos I present below, my hair to stood up on my arms and chills were sent down my back – such undying love. A true oxymoron for two people who continue to use art as their expression of love. We have written a number of posts in the past about Jane and Jimmy Edmonds, who lost their 22 year old son Josh two and a half years ago to a car accident while on vacation in Vietnam. They have since created a website for their ongoing artistic expressions of loss, Beyond Goodbye as an ongoing memorial celebration. As artists, their grief and healing has manifested in the most beautifully esthetic way possible. I am continually awed!

As is common with an unexpected loss, it becomes so difficult for one to comprehend the fact that their loved one is actually gone from this world. This absence haunts one with the need to understand what happened and subsequently track their last days. I wrote about the film Random Hearts, in which this experience is played out perfectly by Harrison Ford (who loses his wife in a plane accident). Jimmy and Jane Edmonds followed this same need to fill their hearts and trace the travels of their beloved son Josh through his journey in Vietnam before he died.

In Vietnam, Josh had used an image of himself on his business card in which he is pretending to be asleep. This image became the metaphor for Jimmy and Jane to trace his travels. I suspect it will raise the hair on your neck, too, as they take you into their world. You view their pain and love — and in the end, you are also awed by the extent of such love. What a heartfelt memorial celebration. It is indeed true, love never ends! Below, I present you with some of the images from different parts of their travels, accompanied by quotes from Josh’s father, Jimmy. To see more, visit their site.

 “There is both pain and joy co-existing in a way that has no equivalent. Particularly so with this image of a boy pretending sleep, all the more poignant now depicting, as it does, a young man in perpetual sleep.”

–Jimmy Edmonds

 “Though our world is re-ordered and different, I am noticing that as time passes it becomes slightly more possible to live with our pain.  The hole is still as big but it is getting less jaggy ’round the edges and much more tolerable.”

–Jimmy Edmonds

“It wouldn’t be until our return home, that I would again feel the full force of Josh’s death, the sharp ache of my boy’s total and forever absence.”

–Jimmy Edmonds

* The parents of Josh chose not to use a traditional funeral director.  They planned and organized the whole funeral service themselves. Watch the most beautiful film of a funeral I have ever seen here.

* You may be moved by the book Released Jimmy Edmonds created of poems, writings and photographs of Josh’s cremation ashes.

Related SevenPonds Articles:

• Beyond Goodbye – Coping After the Loss of a Loved One
  
• ‘In Abstentia’
• Mourning and Transformation — Sifting for Gold