Day twenty-three: Grieve.

When someone is dying or something is lost, we must recognize that it is going, and recognize the value and beauty in that life. Notice where the light lands on their bodies. Listen to the quiet.

My aunt is very sick, and I am at her house with my mom so that she can say goodbye. It is strange to see my aunt’s delicate yellowed skin and her limbs thin like a newborn bird. She makes quiet mumbling noises unless she is excited. When she saw my mother’s face last night she called out in joy, but the noise was so foreign, so different from the confidence and sass I’ve always known. This woman was my mother’s protector when she was a little girl. It’s hard to see the quiet pain in everyone. Our lives are sitting next to hers, it is hard to know how loud we should talk or whether it’s okay to laugh. This is a family designed to laugh with each other, so we keep trying. It makes me think about immortality.

I was mildly obsessed with immortality as a graduate student. I read furiously about the biological and anthropological reasons for romantic love and attraction, about our senses, about reproductive habits of different species, about DNA, survival of the fittest, dogs and cats living together, and mass hysteria. (This world will miss you Harold Ramis!)

I eventually came to the conclusion that all humans are born to seek immortality, to continue the world in our own vision, and to contribute to that path forward. Most people do this through sexual reproduction, by having children. Artists are able to do this in another way as well, through the objects that we hope will outlive us. For a long time I was making work specifically about my family because I find my family to have a fascinating and complex story. It took me some time to realize that my work wasn’t much about the personal, but more about how my family stories reflected more universal stories. I’ve since been creating the artifacts of stories, and many of these are about grief.

Grief is hard to understand without experience. It is easy to push away. Grief is something you have to recognize to get through. We are in a world of stories where the focus is on dangerous or horrifying events. The real difficulty in these events doesn’t come from the event but from the aftermath, the layers of pain that come in grief and dealing with regret.  Grief is mysterious and temporal. Difficult to let go of or hold on to. It is the sister of grace. I'm trying to let it come in, and to let it go.