In my family growing up, death was a normal, everyday occurrence. My father was the town mortician and he had an acute sensitivity to reading the physical expressions of the body during the dying process. The language of dying has now been lost from our cultural vernacular. Few people are able to perceive the physical evidence of dying, to navigate and interpret its mysterious clues. These navigators are suggestive of helmsmen guiding a ship by watching the minuscule light and dark of the water's surface for signs of wind and storm, naming tangible signs for an incomprehensible process.

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A public screening of Waterline was followed by a community 'Death Cafe' organized by Jody Wood and Bayada Hospice within Wood's art studio at Marble House Project in Dorset, VT. Wood transformed her studio into a sitting room and visitors participated in the death cafe by asking questions or sharing their own experiences with death in a non-structured, accepting environment.

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