I learned to confront difficult truths about life by photographing Dad's last days and hunting

The hare stood relieve in the midsection of the route. I raised the .22-calibre go, aligning my eye with the rabbit. I exhaled slowly, searching for stillness.

"Take the shot," my hunting partner said.

I pulled the trigger and the rifle let out a modest crack, gently kicking back into my shoulder.

The bullet sped through the air and disappeared into the distance. The startled rabbit leapt off the road and into the bush. 

I missed. 

We crept forward with a keen eye on the edge of the bush where the rabbit fled. As we approached, he stood outside of any cover, curiously looking back. 

Again, I raised the rifle. A voice inside my head called to the creature. 

Run rabbit, run! Don't you know you're in danger!?! 

He stared, not daring to move a muscle, testing my commitment. 

I hesitated. He remained motionless. 

I took the shot. Before I was even aware, the bullet had passed through the back of his neck and exited. 

As quick as the crack of the rifle, the rabbit had left this world.      

When I approached, it twitched — its synapses making one last defiant plea to death,  one last plea for life. 

Oh crap. Did I really just do that? A sadness overcame me. 

I stroked its soft fur. Its body still radiated warmth. I sat hunched over it for a few more moments. The rabbit's blood slowly stilled. My blood quickened, carrying mixed emotions. Death stared me straight in the face on a cold mountain road.

I started hunting after my dad died in 2015. 

Although he never expressed interest in hunting, my dad always had time to listen to my interests. We used to sit on his back patio — him with a scotch in hand, warming by the fire — and chat about the little and big things life threw our way. He was as much a friend as he was a father to me.

Death took my dad rather quickly. When they found the cancer, it had already taken up residence in his pancreas and spread to his liver. 

Photographing the last days of his life forced me to face the difficult reality of losing him directly. I was apprehensive about even taking the camera into his hospital room at first. He was a fiercely private and independent man, and the idea of preserving some of his most vulnerable moments in photographs was not a decision I made lightly. 

But Dad and I talked at length about it, and when he jumped in with both feet, so did I.

Everyone processes grief differently. I've come to believe it is not something to move on from, but something to move forward with. I've tried to build a home for this grief in my heart and to carry the love forward.

I've always found that life's greatest gifts are found when opening yourself to the riches in the raw, and unearthing the light in the dark. For the same reason, I decided to start hunting. It called me to act and adopt responsibility for the difficult truths of life. 

Eating is to receive life. But it also means to take life. It is a necessary and uncomfortable exchange with the world around you. 

I didn't grow up on a farm. A chicken's breast on my plate was completely divorced from its life. Taken out of sight and out of mind. 

Hunting allows me to engage with this ever-changing, never-ending tension delicately balancing on Earth and to participate in the tide of its breathing. It helps me explore questions such as: What does it take to nourish oneself? Can we really participate in life without death? 

I didn't want my dad to die, but I chose to participate in it by photographing, sharing it and creating a space for others to do the same.

I'm uncomfortable with the idea of killing anything, but to eat is to participate in the cycle of life and death. I think there is something to be gained from participating in something that you may find difficult.

For me, time in the backcountry can't be understated in terms of processing my grief. There's a necessary stillness in hunting that invites you deeper into matters of the heart. 

That rabbit was my first kill.

However, this was the first time an animal transitioned from life to flesh to food by my own hands. I felt deeply humbled at being a part of the process, and to receive a truth in impermanence in this furry little form.

Since then, I've continued to move toward the places I feel tension in life. When I finally got my first deer, my heart still raced with the gravity of what it means to sustain myself. 

And my heart still yearns for the sustenance of fireside conversations that one can only have with a close parent and friend. But whether out in the mountains waiting on the whims of the winds or at home in quiet kinship, I'm grateful for what it means to feel human.

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Freelance contributor

Josh Neufeld is a Vancouver-based photographer who focuses on documenting stewardship, environmental sustainability, restaurants and food systems. He is also the founder of Grief Narratives, a community platform built to provide a space for people to find comfort in the shared experience of death and grief.

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