Roses and Hydrangeas

Name: Lynn B.*

Age: 30

Tell me about the person who died:

I lost both my mom and my stepmom within months of each other. I was very close to both of them. My mother was a smoker from about the age of 11. She developed lung cancer and kept it from the family. We found out on the 4th of July in 2008, and it soon metastasized into her brain. She passed away 2 days after Thanksgiving that year. 

I was finally pregnant with my first child after having had two miscarriages, and my son was born on Valentine's day of 2009. I was still grieving the loss of my mom and coping with how to be a mom without having mine. Then on March 19th, 2009, the phone rang and I was told that my stepmom had died suddenly of a heart attack.

What was your experience of grief like after your loss? How did it change over time? 

Looking back I don't remember a lot of my son's infancy stage. I was quite numb. We had moved to a different state for my husband’s job just before finding out my mother was ill and I had no friends or family out here. I sought out counseling and that's when it all seemed to click: that I am a mom alone without any moms left to guide me. That for my son I had to think about what my moms would do and be the best I can be for him and make them proud. A year later I gave birth to my daughter. My grieving heart was still on the mend, but my children helped me through each day. 

About two years later my best friend called me up asking if everything was ok with me and my husband. It turned out that her husband and son had seen my husband on a date with another woman and he had been making out with her in public. I am now divorced and happier that I have been in years. I have two beautiful children, friends that are like family and while I miss my moms every day I know that they are still with me and are proud of me.

Did anything surprise you about your experience with grief?

Yes, and apparently I surprised a lot of other people too including my therapist. I never asked for help with the kids. I did everything myself. I was wise beyond my years when it came to compartmentalizing. I didn't know how I would make it from day to day. It was extremely difficult.

How did the people in your life support you in your grief? What was helpful? What was frustrating?

My family was grieving as well, and they all became very quiet. We didn't speak much. My husband told me to get over it. He was tired of hearing about it. There is nothing that can be done about it, nothing to bring them back, so why dwell was his standpoint. That upset me, and that's when I sought out the outside counseling, which helped a lot.

How did your private grieving relate to your public mourning?

I didn't want others to know I wasn't ok. I held it together and would only cry at night. I didn't want the look of pity or sorrow from others.

Tell me about something I can photograph that reminds you of the person who died, and why?

My moms were very opposite people, so finding just one thing to represent both is a challenge. They both liked flowers, although my mom had a green thumb and my stepmother had a black thumb. My mom loved hot pink roses and my stepmom loved hydrangeas.

How did your loss and your grief change you?

It taught me that I am stronger than I ever thought I could be. Grieving my moms taught me how to cope with the "loss" of my husband of ten years as well as how to help my kids with the changes. How to turn a horrible situation into a positive impact on my life.

If you had to describe your grief as a literal landscape you've been passing through, what would it look like and feel like at different points in your journey? 

My life is like a forest with a very small stream running through it. When a tree falls down it feels dead, but the forest bed sees it as food and life and grows from it. The stream running through the forest brings with it change and new life like frogs and tadpoles. The water slowly changes the earth, not because it is forceful but because it is persistent.

*Name has been changed.

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This post is part of Grief Landscapes, an evolving art project documenting the unique terrain of people’s grief. Participants share an experience with bereavement, and I then photograph an object that evokes the person who died, transforming it into an abstract landscape inspired by the story. I’m looking for many more submissions and for a range of experiences, so please share widely! Learn more about the project and submit your story. - Mindy Stricke

Totem Pole

Name: Sandra Pate

Age: 58

Tell me about the person who died:

My brother, Kevin, died on May 19th, 2014. He was diagnosed with late stage, inoperable, metastatic kidney cancer at the beginning of March of that year and was told that he had just a few weeks to live. Ten weeks later, at the age of 62, he died peacefully, with my partner and myself present, in the palliative care unit at Toronto's Grace Hospital.

Since Kevin was five years older than I was, we weren’t very close when we were children, but I know that he adored me when we were little; in fact, he named me. He was a brilliant child, an Ontario Scholar, although severely lacking in confidence. In high school he became derailed, perhaps mixing with the wrong crowd. Today I believe that he most likely suffered from mental health issues that he never got any help or support for. Our mother kicked him out of our house when he was just sixteen. 

Four years later my parents and I moved to Montreal and Kevin stayed in Toronto, and we lived in separate cities for many years. For decades, he struggled with drug and alcohol abuse and as a result, he had trouble keeping a job. He moved from rooming house to rooming house, struggling to find his place in the world, although he did manage to hold down two jobs for several years. About twenty-five years ago, Kevin became disabled at work, and he was fortunate to find a subsidized apartment, in City Home, with rent geared to his minimal disability income. With his now very limited proceeds, he was unable to drink excessively and our relationship improved dramatically. Our friendship grew as we talked weekly, finally getting to know each other. At the end we had a deep and affectionate friendship.

Tell me about something I can photograph that reminds you of the person who died, and why?

My favourite objects that will always make me think of Kevin are two small hand-carved totem poles that he made when he was eleven. I was only six at the time and I thought they were wonderful. I still do. They’re both quite small, about 8” high, made from wood with various screws, tacks and beads affixed. One has been painted with several colours – red, black and yellow. The other is just natural wood. On the back, in his childish writing: “Made by Kevin, 1963”.

What was your experience of grief like? How did it change over time?

My other brother, Kim, came from Nova Scotia to visit with his wife and son shortly after Kevin’s diagnosis. Kim was in disbelief, but I am a former R.N. and I was quite sure that the prognosis was accurate. We had a busy, emotional, but somewhat harried time together. It was a crazy time of year at work, and I tried my best to navigate the required tasks while my business partner was out of town. After my brother Kim returned home, I began to feel overwhelmed with sadness and the pressure of all of the responsibility on my shoulders - to visit my brother daily and spend as many of his remaining hours together as possible, to clear out his apartment (25 years of hoarding piled high), and to continue to live my own life. After a few weeks, I sought out a grief counselor, who was very helpful. I only saw her once, but the timing was remarkable. I met with her on Friday May 16th, three days before Kevin died. Unbelievably she sent me an email just an hour before he died, telling me that she was thinking about me and that she was sending me strength and love.

How did people in your life support you in your grief? What was helpful? What was frustrating?

The most helpful for me was visiting Kevin with a few friends who volunteered to come with me. Visiting, day after day, is tough and yet felt essential. Today could be the last, today could be the last. But when you aren't used to visiting with somebody every day, it can become difficult to know what to talk about. Another person brings different conversations to the visit. Refreshing! 

Other friends who hadn’t seen him for years also came to spend time with him and he loved it. His friends visited regularly and had great times with him, playing music and games. He kept a diary until the very end. It was terrific reading about his visits and the events of each day. 

On several other occasions friends came to Kevin's apartment and helped me with the huge task of clearing it out. I knew that once Kevin died, I really wouldn't want to go to his apartment anymore, so it was important to me to get it done as quickly as possible. We finished it two days before he died.

How did people who were grieving the same person respond to the death compared to you? What similarities and differences did you notice?

My father was his typical stoic self. He's quite elderly and unable to drive anymore. Every other Sunday, his wife, who was never one of Kevin’s fans, dropped off my father while she sat in the parking lot and waited for him. She never visited Kevin once. I found it incredibly disrespectful and hurtful and it is hard to spend time with her now. 

Did anything surprise you about your experience with grief?

I was surprised at how overwhelmed I became and how alone in my grief I felt. My brother, Kim, was in denial most of the time and so it was hard to connect deeply with him. I didn't know very many of Kevin's friends and most of my friends did not know Kevin. Since we were not close as children, and we lived in different cities for several years, we really only connected deeply over the past twenty-five years. We had little in common but Kevin often needed help with things and so I became his go-to for help and emotional support. We finally bonded, and it was too bad that we couldn't have enjoyed our friendship through more of our mature years.

After Kevin’s death I felt a huge gap in my world. We had a gathering to celebrate his life, and it was surreal to look at all of the collected and assembled pictures of us with Kevin. Memories come, unexpectedly, in waves and short bursts. Fun times, difficult years, challenging events. I was glad to hear one of his high school friends say he thought that Kevin had a good life.

Sandra Pate lives in downtown Toronto with her wife and their six pound poodle, who is firmly in charge. She has been a real estate Broker ‎since 1981 and in her spare time she enjoys time with her friends, volunteering, traveling, games, great food and wine, and the outdoors. She is currently a volunteer at Emily's House, Toronto's first hospice for children.

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This post is part of Grief Landscapes, an evolving art project documenting the unique terrain of people’s grief. Participants share an experience with bereavement, and I then photograph an object that evokes the person who died, transforming it into an abstract landscape inspired by the story. I’m looking for many more submissions and for a range of experiences, so please share widely! Learn more about the project and submit your story. - Mindy Stricke

News from the (Basement) Studio

First, some amazing news: I was awarded an Ontario Arts Council Visual Arts grant for Grief Landscapes! I’ve been working extremely hard, so it feels incredible to get the recognition and support for this project. I feel grateful to have landed in a country that supports individual artists in this way, even if it’s not always easy to string those grants together. 

To be honest though, I would find a way to do this project no matter what—it’s been a deeply meaningful artistic and personal experience making this work so far. Since launching Grief Landscapes at the beginning of January, I’ve published the first four stories, and have started to receive more from all over the world. Every single submission moves me. I’ve also heard from many others about how reading the stories so far have already helped them learn a lot about how other people grieve. 

The main thing I’m focused on now in addition to photographing is continuing to generate submissions so I can select a wide range of stories for the project. I’ve been spending time writing grief counselors, bereavement organizations, online grief support websites, and anyone and anywhere I else I can think of to help get the word out.

Photographing a new story in my basement studio. 

I want to hear about as many experiences with grief as possible of course, but I also want to uncover stories that aren’t often told. For example, I would be very curious to hear a story from someone whose boyfriend or girlfriend died, either from a young or older person. How did his or her family treat you in the aftermath of a loss like that? I’m also very interested in how it feels to grieve someone with whom you may have had an unresolved complicated relationship. Or what about losing a close mentor or teacher? An ex you were still close with? A twin?

Another thing I’ve been thinking about is that a theme that I keep coming back to in my art practice is “questions and connections”. I touched on the topic of questions before in a previous post, but as this project expands and more people are taking part, I’m realizing that even though I’m not working with people in person this time, the same dynamic of honest questions prompting honest answers that lead to new connections is still here in the online space. I hope it keeps growing. I’m not the kind of artist who likes to squirrel herself away in her garret to make a body of work and then present it to the world fully complete. I can’t help myself—I’m a total extrovert, and my process involves needing and wanting a feedback loop that invites anyone who is interested in the topic I’m working on to chime in. I like having a room of my own, à la Virginia Woolf, but I like that room to have the door open a lot of the time with a big welcome sign on it. 

If you have ideas or thoughts about the kinds of stories you would like to hear in Grief Landscapes, or if you have any questions you have about grief that you’re curious about that you would like to see addressed through the work, please comment here or on Facebook, or contact me. Also, if you have ideas about places or people that I can get in touch with that will help me expand the reach of the project, that’s really helpful too. 

Cigarettes and Linens

Name: Zachary Sera Grant

Age: 29

Tell me about the person who died:

My grandmother, Betty, died unexpectedly of pneumonia on June 6th, 2006, at the age of 81. I didn't get to see her in her last couple of years. I was away at university and was allergic to her home—likely from the mixture of dust, cigarette smoke, ragweed, and emissions from the pulp and paper mill in town. I would always end up in hospital so I was banned from going to visit by my mother, though I spoke with her on the phone every Sunday. About a month before she died she said to me, "You know, I haven't seen you in a while. I miss you, but it's ok, because I know how much you love me." I'm so glad we had that conversation. It gave me a lot of closure.

In my early years, my grandmother was my nanny. She spent hours watching my favourite movie and playing uneventful games with me. She lived in Birmingham throughout World War II, and would tell me stories of growing up in England. I would wake up to her smoking in the kitchen with a pot of tea and a can of carnation milk. I remember the smoke rings swirling around the milk and tea. When I went to bed she would be in the same spot. 

She got me through some difficult times in my childhood. How much she knew of that I'm not quite sure; I don't think I actually want the answer. Later on as my eating disorder progressed and she didn't know know to deal with it, I struggled to relate to her. But I always loved her. I still love her.

Tell me about something I can photograph that reminds you of the person who died, and why?

Player’s cigarettes. I used to run to my grandmother’s linen closet and just smell the mixture of Player’s, fabric softener, and Pears soap. Why she kept her cigarettes with the clean linens I will never know. I have such vivid memories of playing with the silver paper from the boxes. My sister and I loved how beautiful it was.

I remember the towels were a light peach/cream colour on the top of the pile. These were the towels we never used, guest towels I guess. The towels underneath would get darker and more worn until they reached a very 70's orange and brown.

What was your experience of grief like after your loss? How did it change over time?

My life stopped. I had no way to cope. I turned down a very dark path. I feel like grief opened up the madness inside of me. I think I did almost anything to not feel. I would spend hours down by the river, just trying to make sense of it all and figure out what I believed. Death hadn't touched me in the same way before. This was the person who loved me more than anything, and she was now gone. To say I collapsed is an understatement. Eventually I found my way back to my art. I started drawing and writing. I began wearing my grandmother’s jewelry. I would read and reread all the postcards and letters she had sent me. I would think about all the stories she had told me. I would watch Peter Pan, the movie I forced her to watch twice a day, every day, in my childhood.

Later I had a portrait of my grandmother at 6 years old tattooed on my arm. I think the biggest part of healing was the tattoo. Doing all these things somehow shifted the pain. The rest of my family doesn't seem to understand how crushed I was after she died. Why I needed her on my body, in my skin.

If you had to describe your grief as a literal place you've been passing through, what would it look like and feel like at different points in your journey?

I feel like grief is a blanket fort. You can see the outside, but unless you're on the inside, you don't know what it’s like. You rebuild the blanket fort multiple times, but it’s vulnerable. Moving one chair, standing too tall, someone touching it, the whole fort collapses. You keep working on it until it's perfect, but it never is. The blanket is too short, or too long, or too heavy. The chairs slide on the smooth floor. The shelf is too far away or too heavy to build with. The cats attempt to jump on it. It all needs to be cleaned up before dinner. But you'll always rebuild it. Looking for a way to feel safe inside of it. Adding pillows to the hard cold floor. Extra blankets to keep the cold out. A light so you can see through the darkness. Stuffed animals so you aren't alone.

Did anything surprise you about your experience with grief?

I was surprised by how encompassing grief is. How it wraps you up. How you feel it in your body. The weight of it.

How did people in your life support you in your grief? What was helpful? What was frustrating?

I isolated myself a lot, outside of work and school. I hated how everyone kept telling me to go home, to take care of myself. I didn't know what to do with that. I also felt like if another person told me that they were sorry for my loss I might punch them. I really just wanted people to talk in real terms. She died, but no one could say that. People would bring me ketchup chips. That helped.

How did your private grieving relate to your public mourning?

In public I was stoic. I never cried. I continued on with my life. In private I crumbled. Eventually I found ways to express my grief outwardly. But it took a very long time. I think I'm still figuring out that process.

Was there anything about your cultural or religious background that affected the grieving process for you?

I sometimes think I struggled more because I had no faith, or hadn't thought about any in relation to death. I did take a lot of comfort from nature and thinking about her body returning to the earth.

How did your loss and your grief change you?

It changed what I began to study and write about. I started to research and learn about death and grief. I currently focus much of my work in social services on grief. I look for death positivity in the world. Allow people to sit with it, express their grief, however that might look. I allow people to talk about grief as something bigger than death.

Zachary Sera is a non-binary artist, student, madvocate and community support worker living in Toronto with their partner and three cats. 

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This post is part of Grief Landscapes, an evolving art project documenting the unique terrain of people’s grief. Participants share an experience with bereavement, and I then photograph an object that evokes the person who died, transforming it into an abstract landscape inspired by the story. I’m looking for many more submissions and for a range of experiences, so please share widely! Learn more about the project and submit your story. - Mindy Stricke

Ladder

Name: Jordana Jacobs

Age: 43

Tell me about the person who died:

My father, Armin Jacobs, was both far from me and close. He and I were from entirely different cultures—I was raised in a well-to-do suburb of Manhattan, and the wrong brand of juice or what-have-you thrown into the grocery cart was cause for pouting. My father was a Hungarian peasant whose family of eight, before being scattered or killed during the Holocaust, hunched around the kitchen table in their one-room shack, knitting caps for sale. He survived Bergen Belsen because of timing, adolescent strength, the will to live, and the protective love of an older brother. I frequently had to explain to him that I was still earning a salary at work, even when I took vacation or got sick. He called computers “confusers” and fancied the remark witty every single time. He thought nothing of bringing other diners’ leftovers home.

There was a wedge between us because he saw the world in simple, binary ways. Good and evil. Honest and dishonest. Any time I approached an issue with healthy skepticism, he seemed sorely disappointed. He would not hold different truths at the same time.  When I wanted out of my abusive relationship with my mother, who divorced and sued him after having him arrested on a made-up claim of domestic violence, he pushed me to be a good daughter to the woman. Light and dark. Dutiful and neglectful.

But we were also close. He knew, innately and without any of the parenting books I depend on to raise my child, how to love. He accepted and delighted in me, he pushed me past my comfort zone in ways that engendered more gratitude than resentment, he always let me choose the radio station, even as he made fun of my music with exaggerated “oooh baby”s, and there was never any doubt that he would do and sacrifice anything for me.

He survived the camps, he survived a ceiling in a big Manhattan hotel collapsing on his head, he survived my mother, and he survived a stroke. He died in 2013 at age 85, with severe dementia and a cluster of problems, from diabetes to urinary tract infections, that dominoed into major organ failure. When he died, it was time to go. More of his time was spent suffering than living.

Tell me about something I can photograph that reminds you of the person who died, and why?

My dad was a roofer, and I was proud of the ladder affixed to the top of his station wagon. Parked in our driveway, it broadcast that a working-class man lived in that large colonial house on that affluent block in that affluent neighborhood. I am pretty sure that some of our neighbors considered it a blight. I delighted in that idea. To complicate things, my father’s blue-collar work did not pay the bulk of the bills that secured us in the upper middle class, and that was, to put it much too politely, a point of contention between my parents.

Sometimes, my dad would take me to roofing jobs in the lower parts of Manhattan and in Brooklyn. This was the seventies and early eighties so that world is largely gone now. It was mustier, more elderly, and the cityscape was washed over in graffiti. I loved entering those homes: my dad would introduce me, his eight-year-old daughter with two braids, as his assistant, and we’d go to the top of the roof where I would hold one end of a tape measure for him while he marked the other end with a special roofer’s yellow crayon.

What was your experience of grief like after your loss? How did it change over time?

Years before he died, I would cry at a whiff of a thought of losing my father. However, my father’s dementia prepared me for his death. I lost him years before his body shut down. And the loss did not have the clarity or finality of death. 

Dementia crept up on him for years, undetected. As this insidious disease took hold, I mistakenly thought he was simple minded, unhygienic, and maddeningly stubborn. It was easy to be misguided: all of these traits, to a lesser extent, were present in the prime of his life, so I did not realize that he had dementia until it was very advanced. I insisted on reasoning with him; I argued with the poor man. I lost my temper. Once it was unmistakable that he had dementia, I could get along with him more easily while simultaneously letting him go. When he died, connected to a bag filled with his urine and in constant pain, it was a release.

How did people in your life support you in your grief? What was helpful? What was frustrating?

I was completely at peace with my father’s death. Nothing was left unsaid. No hug or kiss or declaration of love was withheld. Others, however, seemed to insist that I needed to mourn him differently and that added a murkiness to something that was really quite simple. 

Near the end of my father’s life, my sister called me and told me that it was time for me to fly out to California to say goodbye to Dad. I did not understand her reasoning—my father had full-blown dementia and was so sick, he did not even notice who was or was not in the room.  Also, I had seen my father a few months earlier, when he was cognizant of my visit, and I told him, to his song-bursting delight, that I was pregnant. I had said goodbye and it was joyful. I was sad to lose him before he could meet his grandson, but I was so happy and grateful that I was able to have shared the news with him. When my son Arno was born on my father’s birthday, it felt like a way of sharing the joy with my father beyond the grave.

At my father’s funeral, we were offered the opportunity to see my father’s body one last time as it lay in the coffin, but I had no desire to see it. My sisters insisted I go in to see him and I demurred, telling their incredulous faces that I really, truly, had closure. When my sister finished visiting with our father’s body, she said he looked good and that she’d hate to see me regret not taking this opportunity to say one final goodbye. I capitulated. I never reached the coffin. What I saw as I approached made me run away. His body was alarmingly bloated and was stained a deep yellow. His nose had a different shape. It was an exhibit of the cruelty of his passage to death. Here and there I find myself vigorously trying to shake this image off like a dog shakes water off its fur. It haunts me. It has nothing to do with my feelings about my father and our goodbye. It is the equivalent of tasting the blood my father shed in his last days or worse.

Was there anything about your cultural or religious background that affected the grieving process for you?

Sitting shiva and sitting in a circle with my relatives, talking about my father, was wonderful. The stories were so consistent. He was a mensch. He’d give you the shirt off his back. Every story had the same theme.

Were there any personal or public rituals that helped you in your grief?

In the year after his death I would take out my cellphone every once in a while and pretend to talk to my father and imagine how the conversation would go. This was particularly poignant after Arno was born and I wanted to call my father and tell him about his baby grandson. It hurts that I cannot share this with my father, who, of everyone I have ever known, was unbridled and uninhibited in his expression of joy. He so loved children. I remember someone complaining about the noise of children and my father responded, “To me, it sounds like music.” I can only imagine how he would have been with Arno.

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This post is part of Grief Landscapes, an evolving art project documenting the unique terrain of people’s grief. Participants share an experience with bereavement, and I then photograph an object that evokes the person who died, transforming it into an abstract landscape inspired by the story. I’m looking for many more submissions and for a range of experiences, so please share widely! Learn more about the project and submit your story. - Mindy Stricke

Crabapples

Name: Nadia Obrigewitsch

Age: 35

Tell me about the person who died:

I lost my baby girl Aida during birth in December 2014. It was a freak accident, a prolapsed cord, and completely unexpected. My pregnancy was healthy and uneventful and I was planning a home birth before I got rushed to the hospital in an ambulance. She was beautiful, had a full head of hair and was a big baby—9lbs 10 oz! We were completely devastated. I remember being in the OR watching the paediatric team try to resuscitate her for about 30 minutes. I will never forget the paediatrician's face when she came over to me to say that there was nothing left to be done. Aida died as the sun set that dark day in December. I was in complete and utter shock.

What was the grief like after your loss, and how did it change over time?

The grief was an unmistakable force that took me on a whirlwind ride of raw, intense emotions. I played the traumatic event over and over again in my mind, each time changing the outcome, willing her to open her eyes and breathe. I could not control anything. It was a dark and confusing place, and a very ethereal experience in that I was never really present in the moment during the first couple of weeks. I was always in the past with Aida or in my head. 

The grief was like this dark visitor that I kept on fighting and denying. But he kept sitting next to me, forcing me to accept the situation. In time this dark figure became a familiar friend, letting me know that another wave was coming. I could not deny these emotions, I could not deny that she was dead. Over the last 10 months the dark figure's visits have spaced out; I can breathe lightly again and even experience some joy in my life. However, when he does visit, it is always an intense experience of loss, sorrow and yearning for that baby girl. 

How did the people in your life support you in your grief? What was helpful? What was frustrating?

For the most part everyone has been great. In the beginning we were inundated with meal trains, cleaning services, cards, childcare support, money, you name it! Close friends set up a group chat for me to vent whenever I was finding it overwhelming. They let me know that they were here for me and that they would hold me when I needed to be held. Two of my sisters came to visit and stayed with me for the first four weeks to support my husband and my 3-year-old, and one of my sisters helped me through the grieving process like a pro. What was helpful was just somebody saying 'I see you are in pain, I will hold some space for you, I will let you cry, please lean on me'. 

What was frustrating was hearing everyone else's baby losses (miscarriage, abortion) and then being inundated with stories of various losses. That did not make me feel any better. What was also frustrating and hurtful were friends who just dropped off the face of the earth.

How did your private grieving relate to your public mourning?

There was no difference. I cried everywhere. On the street, in my office, in front of strangers, in my bathroom. I was brutally honest with everyone and anyone who would listen. However, I only cried if it felt safe. If it felt like an inappropriate place to break down, like the middle of a meeting, or playing with my toddler, I would always pause the grief. Then I would dig it up again when I was in a safe private place. This involved looking at her pictures or listening to some triggering music. I knew that if I didn't address the grief in a timely manner that it would come back 100 times worse.

Was there anything about your cultural or religious background that affected the grieving process for you?

Nope. Not at all. I lost all faith in everything. The universe is chaos.

Were there any personal or public rituals that helped you in your grief?

In the first couple of days I really felt Aida's spirit around me. It was a curious and protective spirit. I saw a flock of golden crowned kinglets on a walk shortly after she died and since then every time I see a bird peering at me curiously I think it's her saying hello. We planted her ashes in a crabapple tree at the Government House in Victoria, and had an intimate goodbye ceremony filled with family and friends around the tree. It was very beautiful. So the image of a bird or apple tree has really helped me try to believe that she is ok, and I am ok. 

I got my tarot cards read about 3 months after her death and the reader described Aida's spirit as this joyful curious light, saying 'what a ride that was mummy!'. She went from a very visceral experience in my womb to a very light ethereal experience in death. She never experienced the outside world; her spirit was never corrupted with any pain or suffering.

I guess these aren't rituals per se, but I did a lot of 'grief projects' to help me through my mourning. I drew, I wrote in journals, I went to therapy, I went for walks in the garden where her ashes are planted, I found a locket for her hair, I arranged for an illustration to be made of a bird and the tree to give to family and friends. These kinds of projects just let me believe that she was alive, she did matter, instead of it being some sort of figment of my imagination. That's the hard part about stillbirths. You don't have any actual memories or experiences of the child, just a whole load of hopes and dreams. So you can really mourn infinite versions of that child, which is so heartbreaking and never ending, and also not rooted in any reality.

How did your loss and your grief change you?

It turned me upside down and inside out. My whole molecular structure was broken down into mush and I am now slowly but surely reassembling it all. My heart is still pretty raw and I feel everything very deeply these days, from a silly ad on the telly to an intense crime drama program where there are characters grieving. All of that can sometimes be too much for me. 

It probably doesn't help that I am now 7 months pregnant again with another baby girl. This has definitely complicated the grief and has amplified it.

This experience has forced me to be present in my life, to take note of myself and my surroundings. I crave real connection with people. Pleasantries and acquaintances I can do without. I try to be kind with everyone because I know that infant loss is a minefield topic; however, I also set boundaries for myself and if I feel they are crossed I am honest about it. Above all the experience has taught me empathy. True empathy for the human condition which is suffering. I had no idea before. I thought I knew, but I didn't.

Nadia Obrigewitsch was born in Malaysia, grew up in Ireland and now lives in Victoria, BC with her two children and husband. In her spare time she likes singing and playing the ukulele and attending the odd burlesque show. She currently works at the University of Victoria as the Waste Reduction Coordinator.

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This post is part of Grief Landscapes, an evolving art project documenting the unique terrain of people’s grief. Participants share an experience with bereavement, and I then photograph an object that evokes the person who died, transforming it into an abstract landscape inspired by the story. I’m looking for many more submissions and for a range of experiences, so please share widely! Learn more about the project and submit your story. - Mindy Stricke

Rudraksha (Prayer Beads)

Name: Sharada Eswar

Age: 42

Tell me about the person who died:

My dad’s name is Krishnamoorthi, and we were very close. He died suddenly sixteen years ago of a heart attack, when he was 65. It was so unexpected, it was the first heart attack, and he succumbed to it. 

My dad was a self-made man, and he was very much my sister’s and my hero. He wasn't much of a talker, but the silences spoke volumes. When I started working, he would drop me off every day. The ride was probably around 30-40 minutes. And there would be days when not a word would be exchanged. The entire ride would be done in complete silence, but it was very natural. Nothing needed to be said. 

He was in marketing and sales, so he traveled a lot and would be at home for about ten days in a month. He would always return with gifts for us, the same gift every time, because he would never remember that he'd gotten it for us. I think my sister and I were too kind to say, "but Papa, you got this last time,” because he would be so happy giving it to us.

What was the grief like after your loss, and how did it change over time?

I think the first couple of years, I sort of told myself that he's away, on one of his travels, and he'll be back. But then slowly, you realize, no, he's not coming back. My sister and my brother-in-law were very helpful, and my brother-in-law—so sweet of him—would offer to give me a ride to work. But I couldn't think of anyone else doing that for me. I probably felt guilty that if I accepted somebody's offer, I would be disloyal. On occasion I was probably rude to my brother-in-law and my sister, when they were trying to make it easier. I didn't want anything, I just wanted to deal with this myself. I knew that he was dead. But I was not ready to let go, either emotionally or metaphysically.

Time is the biggest healer though. It can't heal the scars that are there, but over the years, I've learned to allow people to extend their hand to console me.

Something like seeing a peanut—my dad used to love peanuts—sometimes even seeing one peanut, can trigger happiness or sadness, depending on what frame of mind I'm in. Then there'll be days where I don't actively think of him, but it's like an open wound. It never really heals, but I've learned to cherish the memories I have of him and to be kinder to myself. 

It's great to grieve, and it's okay for people to see you grieving. Because for me, it makes his existence real. The grieving, it tells me that yes, he was there. Since it's been so long since he passed away, I say that the tears are a reminder that I'm proud to be his daughter. I don't mind them anymore. I don't know how it makes the other person feel, and I'm sorry if it makes them uncomfortable, but there's nothing I can do about it.

How did your private grieving relate to your public mourning?

It was originally extremely private, because I didn't want my mom to see me breaking down. She often said she felt strong because I was strong, and while I understand that it came from a good place, it was a kind of a weight on me. Privately, when I was taking a shower, or taking public transport to work, I would suddenly find myself crying copiously.

Was there anything about your cultural or religious background that affected the grieving process for you?

In Hinduism, there are many ceremonies that take place during the 13 days after a death. My mom's older sister, who was with us throughout that period, is very traditional, and had a beautiful way of explaining the rituals and the stories behind them. Death is such a strange thing that even if you consider all of these rituals as old grandmothers’ tales, you still want to do them when something happens to you personally.

It was all about my dad's soul reaching moksha—not exactly heaven, but a safe place—and you want to do everything to insure that happens. For instance, on the 13th day, one makes donations. Some of them are symbolic, like you're supposed to donate a cow. And you do that because it's a long journey from this world to that world, and the soul has to to be nourished, and the cow is a provider of food.

Another example, on the 9th and the 10th day is when people come and visit you, and they wail loudly, I mean it's almost like Greek keening. At first it sounds irritating, but then it becomes comforting. Just being together. Though I think some part of you wants to be alone, there's also a part of you that doesn’t.

How has your loss and your grief changed you?

I think I'm not scared to lose another person now. Nothing worse can happen than losing my dad.

Tell me about an object that reminds you of the person who died, and why?

I have beads of his called rudraksha beads. They are seeds from a type of endangered evergreen tree. The name of the tree is Sanskrit. Rudra is a name of Shiva, and Aksha means teardrop. The story goes that Shiva was in deep, blissful meditation. When he opened his eyes, it moved him so much to see the beauty and the peace that surrounded the world that he cried. The teardrops that fell to earth became this tree. I feel very close to my dad when I wear the beads. He had a rough exterior but he was also man enough to cry. I wear them every day—sometimes I don't even realize they are there, it's just a part of me. 

If you had to describe your grief as a landscape you’ve been passing through, what would it look like and feel like at different parts of your journey?

It's a still body of water, like a lake. But then you drop a pebble, and the ripple triggers the grief, which becomes a torrential river or ocean, and I am completely subsumed in it, and then it becomes still again. It's ever-present.

Sharada Eswar's passion for words, spoken and written, began at an early age. A trained Indian classical musician (Carnatic School), Sharada has been performing and teaching in Toronto and internationally, drawing on her own South Asian ancestry and heritage. Sharada is a published children’s author, Ontario Arts Council’s Cultural Animator in Mississauga/Peel and a core artist with Jumblies Theatre in Toronto, where she works extensively with diverse communities. 

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This post is part of Grief Landscapes, an evolving art project documenting the unique terrain of people’s grief. Participants share an experience with bereavement, and I then photograph an object that evokes the person who died, transforming it into an abstract landscape inspired by the story. I’m looking for many more submissions and for a range of experiences, so please share widely! Learn more about the project and submit your story. - Mindy Stricke

Launching Grief Landscapes in 2016

After actively collecting stories and making images for Grief Landscapes for the last few months,  I’m ready to move to the next phase. It’s time to go live, to start sharing what I’ve made so far, and to collect more stories to complete the project. 

When I started, I wasn’t sure how many images I would ultimately make; I was just feeling my way as I went along. It’s finally starting to take shape. I’ve decided to post one Grief Landscape each week, starting the first week of January. It’s been a very intense and moving experience to make images in response to other people’s losses. It feels like a heightened and risky exchange sometime, but I’m happy that participants have reported it as a positive and cathartic one.

I'm currently recruiting more people to participate, and will continue to choose the stories I will shoot for the remainder of the project. I’m especially looking for men (many more women than men have responded so far), and for people sharing stories about bereavement experiences that tend to be rendered invisible by our culture (but of course I want to hear from everyone, as each grief experience is unique). I anticipate that I’ll receive more contributions than I can photograph, but all of the responses and testimonies I receive are extremely helpful, and I hope to use them all in some capacity during the course of the project.

So check back here soon. I'm taking a short break, and I’ll start posting Grief Landscapes on the first Thursday in January and then every week thereafter.

Please help me get the project out into the world by sharing the project on social media, and forwarding it to friends and family. And if you have any suggestions or connections to organizations that deal with bereavement that can help spread the word, that would be great too. Thanks for your help!

Another Book Cover: Mothers and Food

I didn't know this book was coming out the same time as the other one, but here it is! Another image from the installation You Are Not Where You Were from Greetings From Motherland is being featured on the cover of the Demeter Press book, Mothers and Food: Negotiating Foodways From Maternal Perspectives. Jane Jones set up this hilarious image of mothers and cheerios, and I photographed it.  One of the things I love about doing community-engaged art is when I bring in an idea and the overall structure for a project, and the participants run with it. It's a really exciting way to way to work, because people will often come up with things I never would have thought of, like sticking a cheerio over a miniature mom's head. 

New Book Cover: What's Cooking, Mom?

Some nice news to share! An image from Greetings from Motherland has been chosen as the cover of a new book: What’s Cooking, Mom? Narratives about Food and Family (edited by Tanya M. Cassidy and Florence Pasche Guignard, Demeter Press). Bryn Scriver, one of the participants in the first Greetings from Motherland workshop in Madison, Wisconsin, set up and photographed this image that was a part of the miniatures project You Are Not Where You Were. 

View fullsize

A description of the book from the publisher's website:

“What's Cooking, Mom? offers original and inventive narratives, including auto-ethnographic discussions of representations, discourses and practices about and by mothers regarding food and families. These narratives discuss the multiple strategies through which mothers manage feeding themselves and others, and how these are shaped by international and regional food politics, by global and local food cultures and by their own ethical values and preference, as well as by those of the ones they feed.”

If you’re interested in buying the book, you can use the coupon code MOTHERS to save 40%.