By taking me to that show, what remained of my family in the aftermath of my son’s suicide was telling me, ‘Please come back to us. We still need you.’
When my daughter died, I hated the sun for rising without her. I wept as the world turned green and flowers burst open. But the backyard birds were a different story.
As an artist, it's an intimate and risky exchange to make something based on someone else’s grief. But I’d rather attempt to connect and engage than to turn away.
I had my children young, keeping in mind that my own mother died 46. Now I’m 46, missing my mother, grieving my 12-year-old son, and also happily, unexpectedly pregnant.
We may try size up our grief to justify the depth of our pain, or to remind ourselves that it could be worse. But trying to determine a hierarchy does no one any good.
In the year since cancer took my little girl's life, I find myself saying 'I'm sorry.' For not being able to save her, for surviving her death, and for simply being 'sorrowful.'