Crib Rail

Last week, I posted the story that inspired Grief Landscapes—my friend Lindsay's account of losing her young son. This week, her husband Adam shares his perspective.

Name: Adam J. Fleischhacker

Age: 40

Tell me about the person who died:

Miles was my boy. He was exactly sixteen months old when he died. He went to sleep at day care, and basically never woke up. I’m so thankful that his passing was peaceful. He spent about 24 hours on life support but we believe he was already gone. When we turned off the machines, I held his little body in my arms until his heart stopped. It was the most painful thing I’ve ever done, but so very important to me to have done it.

Miles was a joy. My favorite thing to do was to hold him face-to-face while we just shouted with each other. A joyous, life-affirming shout-off. He had crazy good dance moves, the most charming smile, and the brightest eyes you could imagine. Of course he could be a real crab too. He loved his bottles, and demanded them all night long. He didn’t have very many words but he said “Dada.” He was just starting to walk. Miles was a colicky little guy in the first six to eight months or so, and I always believed it was because he wanted to move. He wanted to get up and go, crawl around, explore, do stuff! So when he first started standing on his own and taking steps, he would get this amazing delighted look on his face like “Holy shit, I am walking! Can you believe this?!” It was magical to witness. That was Miles.

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

Miles used to stand at the foot of his crib and bite the rail, then shift his weight and rock side to side, sliding his bottom teeth back and forth. He left these nice big scratches in the white finish. People assume it’s sad to talk about your lost loved ones, but I love to talk about Miles. However, one of the things that’s hard about losing him at only sixteen months is that not very many people knew him, so there are fewer opportunities to recollect him with others. What I love about these scratches in the crib rail is that he quite literally left his mark. He really was a guy that wanted to take a bite out of life (distinct from his brother who was more cautious and laid back), and along the way he added some nice texture to his crib rail. 

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

At first I felt shock and numbness. That sort of became a fog that lasted probably a year. At the same time, I felt mentally clear and focused as far as what needed to be done for our surviving son, Miles’ twin brother Reed. I was open to accepting help, even ready to ask for it, which is normally very difficult for me. I didn’t want to be alone. I was so grateful for the family and friends who descended on us and I was scared for them to leave, so I spaced out the visits from all the people who offered to travel to see us.

Then there was the anger. There was no one to blame but I was (and sometimes still am) just furious at the world. If life were a game, I didn’t want to play anymore. I wanted to quit. Not hurt myself, I wasn’t suicidal. I just didn’t want to do anything or be anywhere. I wanted not to exist. I was tired, and slept a lot. Found it hard to focus or do any kind of work. But slowly I became more and more focused on what I wanted my life to look like moving forward. 

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

It’s empty and dark. Endless, yet also impossibly confining.

Did anything surprise you about your experience with grief?

I was surprised to be able to communicate and share. I didn’t feel the need to protect others from my grief. The profound darkness was surprising in a way—I guess that I could have the will to continue in the face of such horror was surprising. Also it’s surprising that it can open you up in a way. Open you up to accepting the love that you feel pouring in from others. Open you up to be more patient with your fellow human beings—especially strangers you encounter who might otherwise have frustrated you with bad driving or inconsiderate grocery store etiquette for example.

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

Just being there is the number one thing people can do. Be with you. Then of course there’s helping with the logistics and all the administrative BS. People from work were bringing food constantly. That was amazing, the volume of support and the number of people who wanted to pitch in. It was frustrating when people shied away. Or worse, when they tried to bring up their grief as a way to relate. I think my number one pet peeve is anyone who tries to talk about a miscarriage as a way to relate. It’s apples and oranges. I can’t comment on or judge anyone else’s pain, but losing a child that you knew and spent time with who had a personality is much worse than a miscarriage. It just is. 

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

My wife took it very hard, of course. She spent the first three days or so sleeping almost the entire day. She couldn’t eat at all. She just shut down completely. We were both just devastated obviously. But we were also grateful, right from the beginning, that he did not suffer, that no one missed anything, or was neglectful. That we truly felt nothing could have been done. My parents and siblings were devastated but I didn’t notice much beyond that, I was too consumed by my own grief. I didn’t feel much obligation to notice anything about what they were going through.

How did your private grieving relate to your public mourning?

They were pretty closely linked I think. I probably tried to keep the public mourning more shiny than the private mourning. Show my resolve to go on. Be strong and all that stuff. But I have many close friends that I was very comfortable being open with; and I knew, maybe instinctively, that it would ultimately be good for me and for them if I tried to be as open as possible.

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

Culturally I think we have a completely warped view of death and grief. We try to ignore or bury it. I did that too before this happened. It’s ridiculous. We are all going to the same place, so why do we pretend that something’s gone wrong when someone dies? We all die, we are supposed to die. I’m not saying it’s not tragic, and that loss is not painful. But the idea that life should be free of pain and grief seems to be a cornerstone of our culture; the idea that loss and death are an aberration - it just makes no sense.

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

We held a super small memorial service with just close family a few days after he died, and it felt essential to set aside that time to gather and commemorate. At the one-year anniversary of his death we travelled to New York and had a memorial with our closest friends, most of whom we had not seen since he died. That was extremely helpful to me. To have everyone come together, acknowledge his life, acknowledge our loss, and have our friends stand by us and say “Your loss is our loss too. We carry this burden with you.” To pass the one-year mark, to face all those people, to accept their support, and to remember Miles in that way, I felt as though I’d been through a portal on my grief journey.

How did your loss and your grief change you?

Losing Miles broke my heart, permanently. But it also broke my heart open. I think I’m more sensitive, more patient. I feel stronger (some of the time – there are still times when I am completely crushed, devastated beyond all reason). I feel more focused. I think the little worries in life bother me less. I’m no longer afraid of death. I want to be around to raise my other son, and there’s a lot of things I’d like to do in this lifetime, but I’ll be glad for the relief from this grief when I shuffle off. And although I don’t believe in heaven or any kind of afterlife that we can possibly understand—maybe I’ll be with Miles again, even if it’s just in oblivion. I guess the simple version of that is: either I’m wrong and there is an afterlife and we’ll be together, or I’m right and I’ll be gone so it won’t really matter. 

Adam Fleischhacker is a director, editor, writer and producer of film, television and video. He spent twenty years in New York producing and editing television, making independent films, and creating and hosting a web series for Food Network. He recently returned to his hometown, Cleveland OH, where he continues his work, karaokes with his wife, and plays with his son.

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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

Sneaker

Name: Lindsay F.

Age: 47

Tell me about the person who died:

Miles was one of my 16-month-old twin sons. Our struggle to conceive was a long one, and at 44, I was thrilled to be having twins, as I knew it was my last chance. My boys were both born big for twins, but Miles was bigger than Reed at 7lbs 8oz. He was always hungry, very colicky and seemed totally miserable until about 3 months, when he started to emerge from his alien-like infancy and grow into the bubbly, curious and fearless little boy whose barrel chest, stocky body, and cherubic face made it impossible to stay mad even after he’d destroyed all he could get his chubby fingers on. He was a terrible sleeper, but I got so used to his wake-ups that sometimes when he actually slept for a long stretch, I would secretly wish for him to wake up just so I could hold him and look at his long eyelashes and his face, round as the moon, while I fed him a bottle. He was joyful, bossy, and exuded a willful love and interest in life that was magnetic. He loved to be held and tickled, and was incredibly tuned into others’ reactions to him—he was 100 percent extrovert, and gazed into my eyes with all love and connection I could ever ask for.  

On the day that he died, in September 2014, I kissed him goodbye in the morning as he went off to daycare, and got a call just after lunch that he had became unresponsive during his nap. They eventually got a pulse, but had he survived he would have been brain-dead, and he died within 24 hours. The autopsy is unclear—he had a routine virus in his system—adeno virus C—and severe pneumonia. The lab lost the sample of his cerebral spinal fluid so were unable to determine whether the virus had spread to his brain or it was the pneumonia that killed him. There were no signs that he was sick—the daycare reported that he had a good morning and ate a full lunch. And then he just died, without a hint that there was anything wrong. I was told by several doctors that it was a perfect storm of catastrophic events in his body—a one-in-a-billion circumstance.

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

Though our boys couldn’t yet walk, they were required to wear shoes at daycare, so we bought them each their own sneakers when they were about a year old. Miles’ feet were a size larger than Reed’s, so this was one of the few things they didn’t share. To me, his sneakers represent the corporeal, which is so much of the way one relates to a baby—his pink feet that I squeezed and nibbled to no end. When he did start to walk, the sneakers represented his fearless will to move forward, to explore and delight in the world around him.  

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

At first I couldn't function at all—I couldn't eat or sleep. The shock and horror was unimaginable. I was so confused. My arms felt empty. Of course I still had Reed to hold, but my arms ached for Miles, and I imagined what a phantom limb ache might feel like.

Slowly, I began to return to the tasks of daily living. Now, much of the time I try to stay distracted and busy. I’m helped by talking with friends and family about their lives, the mundane tasks of keeping up with a household, and the joys and stresses of taking care of my surviving son. At those times I think I'm ok, that I can live with this and am getting used to the new normal. At other times the intrusive thoughts of that day’s chain of events and the well of sadness and longing are unbearable.

I worry about my surviving son incessantly, and am full of fear when he gets as much as a sniffle. Did I miss something with Miles? I have to save Reed from the same fate. It’s totally irrational and yet persists. I sometimes question why I'm still here. For a long time, I felt that losing Miles made me less myself. I only knew him for 16 months, but he was such a part of who I’d become, I wasn’t sure who I was without him. Talking to my grief counselor and friends and family makes it easier. As does numbing out in front of the TV for hours on end. Sometimes it seems like a different life, I feel so far from him. Other times it feels like it happened yesterday and my heart breaks open again.

Reed is too young to understand but has had adjustment issues, not surprisingly. This will be something he grows up knowing, and I’m sure his feelings and reactions will change over the years, and we will need to learn how to discuss it with him at each stage.

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 its worst, a post-apocalyptic or desert landscape—empty, barren and full of ugliness. At its best, a sidewalk in Anytown, USA.

Did anything surprise you about your experience with grief?

The way I can't predict it. It’s hard to know what will set me off, and also, what will help me get back on track. The most surprising is the depth of the loneliness. My husband and I sustained the exact same trauma and loss but are rarely on the same page in a given moment, nor do we often talk to each other about it. We mention Miles all the time, things he used to do, what he’d be doing now, but to grieve to and with each other feels like too much. To bear it oneself is hard enough; to fully expose the depth of suffering to one’s partner feels like an onslaught. So we protect each other.

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

Friends and family just being there, not afraid to go there with me, has been most helpful. We’ve had lots of visitors and being able to talk, or not talk, has been a godsend. Every card, every gesture toward Reed, every mention of Miles’ name, any type of remembrance means so much. Least helpful are people who've said nothing. 

We moved to a new city after it happened, to be near family, and so I’m meeting a lot of new people. I’ve stopped telling people that I lost a child. I find that their reactions are too much responsibility for me; the shock on people’s faces, as well as the quickness to change the subject, is too much to bear. Most of the people we do know here rarely mention it. When I bring up Miles’ name, they are often silent. But I know people are doing their best around a topic that is misunderstood and kept in the shadows. 

Miles inspired this project and I’m so grateful for that. It would be much better if we all could learn to communicate about grief and loss—it is so taboo, so unmentionable that the bereaved can often feel isolated and different. We are “that family” now and I sense from many people just how “other” we are. Not bringing up my son because you think it will upset me couldn’t be more misguided. I’m always thinking about Miles. When you don’t shy away from the topic, or you say his name, you are standing with me in remembering him; his life meant something. I regret all the times that I didn’t mention a loss to friends and family who were grieving because I didn’t want to upset them. I too didn’t understand.

How did your private grieving relate to your public mourning?

I don't publicly grieve. I feel a pressure to keep it together in front of others and also to protect them, and myself, from their reaction to our story. I only feel safe exposing my grief to those I think can handle this level of suffering.

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

I wish I had religion or spirituality to turn to. It would be helpful to believe in something—a rationale, heaven, an afterlife. Not having those things makes it harder.

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

I’ve written a lot about it, and to Miles directly.  And I’ve shared emails with good friends about my grief. Talking on the phone was too much for me in the beginning. Email correspondence was a way to stay connected, be heard and understood.

How did your loss and your grief change you?

I feel an understanding of the human condition that I might someday appreciate, but I’m still too raw to assess that. I’m much more sensitive to the plight of humanity and human suffering. Things just never feel "right" anymore, even if on the outside everything seems ok. I do have tremendous gratitude and appreciation for the people in my life, and for others with whom I have a positive interaction. When I’m present, even in the most routine of interactions, I’m allowing the power of connection to enrich me. Even my errands are different now—a conversation with a cashier seems to take on a greater significance. I am a more authentic person now. It's easy to see what really matters.

In Crib Rail, the next Grief Landscapes installment, Lindsay’s husband Adam shares his experience with grief after Miles’ death.

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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

The Toronto Sun

The Toronto Sun 

Name: Lisa P.

Age: 43

Tell me about the person who died:

Jose was my father. We called him Joe. Some of his nicknames were Joey, the Dalai Lama, and Jack, because people thought he looked like a Spanish version of Jack Nicholson. In 2003 while I was away in Mexico, my dad was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma and given 3 months to live. He died on August 10, 2013. I was with him when he died, and saw him breathe his last breath. 

My dad was a very genuine and real person. His laugh was large and he always helped others. My dad had big hands and when he died they were arthritic and twisted up a bit. He was someone who understood me more than anyone I knew. He helped anyone he could. I miss him like crazy. My dad and I talked on the phone a few times a day as he didn't have much to do.

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

My father was a coffee truck driver. And as a coffee truck driver he sold copies of the Toronto Sun newspaper. I remember him picking up a huge stack in the morning and as he drove from factory to factory the stack would quickly disappear. But he always kept the top copy for himself.  A tattered and torn copy, he would read it every day when he had a break, although he only had a few breaks during his 12 hour days. For the most part this was the only time I saw my dad read, but it was a ritual that he enjoyed daily while drinking his coffee. My father was a very practical man, and whenever I see this paper, I immediately think of him.  

What was your experience of grief like after your loss?

Even though I had a lot of time to prepare for his loss, I felt numb. And as I write this, I realize that I still feel numb. And angry. Angry that one of the best people in the world was taken away early. Along with my grief came an understanding of injustice. Couldn't the bad people of the world die instead of the nicest guy ever? Because his sickness lasted so long, I was not quite prepared for the finality of death. I cry a lot and sadness is closer to the surface. I also talk to people about it a lot because, well, I think we should. Everyone has lost something.

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

Some people think that there is a due date on grief and that you should feel better about it. But the helpful bits were when people just understand that the sadness will never really go away, it will just dull a bit.

Did anything surprise you about your experience with grief? 

Just that it lasts so long.

How did your private grieving relate to your public mourning?

I have always been very public about my mourning. I have also had two miscarriages in the past six years and feel that my community and the world at large shouldn't be shielded by my mourning. I think of cultures where people mourn out loud, and that is what I did. At first I tried to be more calm, and then when I felt tears and anger, I just told people that was how I was and if they couldn't deal, to leave. Which really, no one ever did.

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

I think that being Spanish and open with my feelings made it easer for me to grieve.

Were there any mourning rituals that helped you in your grief?

I wrote a lot. I drew photos of my father. I touched things that were his and for a while I wore a few of his shirts, which sounds creepy. I am in the process of making a quilt out of my dad's old shirts for my son. It won't look like much but it will be the Grandpa Joe quilt.

How did your loss and your grief change you?

I am a bit more serious and quiet. And have a bit more of a fuck you attitude. If you don't like it, don't look. I also realize that I am very aware of how short life really is. It sucks.

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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

Racquetball Racquet

Name: David Goldstein

Age: 43

Tell me about the person who died:

My friend Michael McLaughlin died in 2009 at the age of 38. He was in Tulum, Mexico, on the first day of a vacation with his wife’s family. He went out snorkeling by himself in the bay and somehow drowned. His family saw him being tossed by the waves and kayaked out to save him, but it was too late.

I had known Michael for 13 years. We met as counselors at a summer camp for gifted students, where we were engaged in the task, as Michael put it, of “Giving rich, privileged kids the leg up they so desperately need.” When I decided to move to New York a few months later, I crashed at his pad, a postage-stamp-sized apartment in the West Village that he and his roommate, Jordan, called the Tiny Happy. I look back on those months as one of the happiest, or at least funniest, times of my life. The Tiny Happy was a center of culture for Michael and Jordan's friends, with frequent open mic nights and a rotating cast of people crashing on the futon. We were all stressed about what we were doing in New York—how we would make money, whether we would find love, what we should do with our lives. But Michael brought to all of those fears a kind of fierce, funny love that made everything vaguely hilarious. Michael wrote later in life that “In the Tiny Happy, comedy was love.” I think that was true, but not just in the Tiny Happy. It was true of Michael’s whole life. The humor that permeated his soul wasn’t a defense against bitterness or cynicism. For him, art was a kind of sharing, the constant possibility of potential friendship. 

He was a prolific and phenomenally creative artist, who hadn’t yet achieved the recognition he deserved. He was a talented puppeteer whose plays included puppet versions of Sartre’s No Exit (Tagline: “Hell is other puppets”) and Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus (in which, when asked by the devil to name the thing he most desires, Faustus shouts, “Shower me with Jujubes!”). His thesis film, Shadow Puppets of Doom, stands as a masterpiece of the puppet horror-comedy genre—although granted, it may be a genre of one.

We became close to each other’s families—I have spent many happy hours with his parents and siblings, and mourned with him when his father died. We vacationed together with our spouses. His widow remains one of my best friends. He surrounded himself with the kindest, gentlest group of people you could hope to meet. I was privileged to be part of that group.

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

At the summer camp, Michael urged me to try racquetball. I’m not much of a sports guy, but I fell in love with the game, and it became one of my favorite activities. When we lived in New York together, we played a couple of times a week at Columbia University, where he was getting his MFA. Playing with Michael was wonderful because we never managed to work up much of a sense of competition; we spent most of our games laughing. We made valiant attempts at other gym-related activities—I think we dragged ourselves once or twice around the indoor track and played a single ludicrous game of basketball—but always came back to racquetball. After each game we would go out for dinner or a drink, or just walk around campus discussing art and life. We debated the movies he was trying to make and the dissertation and poems I was trying to write. And we talked endlessly about love and relationships. So those racquetball games were often preludes to scenes of intense intellectual and emotional connection. 

After he died, his wife gave me his racquetball racquet. I’ve since moved to Canada, where everyone plays squash, so the racquet sits inside a basement closet.

What was your experience of grief like after your loss?

Because of the unexpectedness of his death, I experienced a moment where life goes from being totally fine to totally not fine. This moment came in the form of a phone call from a mutual friend of Michael’s while I was at dinner with friends and family. I knew, somehow, what he was going to say before he said it. Just the texture of his voice was enough to tell me that Michael had died. As the knowledge entered me it took over my entire body. I could barely stand or speak. But at the same time, I felt one step ahead of myself in the process. Since somehow I already knew what had happened, it was as if I was already grieving, and I was feeling myself respond to the news.

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

Many people talk of water when they talk of bereavement. In this case, it’s inescapable. Michael died in the sea, but he also strongly associated himself with water. He always had a deep respect and love for water, but knew its power. On our first trip together, we went backcountry camping in Point Reyes National Seashore in Northern California, near his childhood home. We didn’t have a permit, and I was worried we would get stopped by rangers. In the middle of the night, I awoke with a ranger’s flashlight shining, I was sure, directly in my eyes. It turned out to be a full moon, which washed the beach in cold light, and spotlighted the gray fox breaking into our packs. We ran up and down the beach for hours. After he died, we scattered his ashes out over the sea near that beach.

Did anything surprise you about your experience with grief?

I’m sad that for all our history together, I find myself forgetting more and more details about him as his death gets farther away. His existence, which was so rich and complex, gets winnowed down to a handful of representative moments, quotations, gestures. I suppose it's just the nature of memory—how can you keep a whole other person in your consciousness?—but it still feels like a betrayal.

How did your people in your life support you in your grief?

My grief experience is unusual, especially in the case of losing a friend, because of Michael’s strong and intimate community of friends stretching back to childhood. When Jordan, who was not just his roommate but also his best friend from high school, died in 2002 of cancer, this community supported each other intensely. Michael’s death galvanized us in the same way. We were sad that we knew how to do this so well, that we’d already had the experience of losing a friend. But it was also comforting to know that we knew how to take care of each other. We were really able to mourn as a community in a way that I think was probably common when people lived in small towns and knew everybody. In concert with his family, we held memorial services in New York, where he lived, and in California, where he grew up. We talked frequently, and gathered on the anniversary of his death to mourn (we still do this when possible). Our lives have taken us in different directions but we still share an unwavering bond.

How did people who were grieving the same person respond to the death compared to you?

At one of those gatherings, a year after his death, two of my friends talked at length about how angry they were. Hearing that made me realize how little anger I feel about Michael’s death. Immense sadness and compassion, but not anger.

How did your private grieving relate to your public mourning?

There was no division. Because the community was so present and intense, the public display of mourning around his death was just a natural extension of what we were all feeling. Those public markers—memorials, scattering the ashes, gatherings, conversations—become a visible manifestation of private trauma. And with those people there never has to be a discussion—there’s always an understanding that his loss is there, and that it shapes us. Since we don't have to talk about it, we do, quite often, in an easy and fluid way. His death and my memories of him are integrated into my sense of self. My grief feels permeable, moving through me and out from me. Some part of me thinks of him almost every day, in mostly tiny ways. He’s simply present.

How did your loss and your grief change you?

Much of what I do is touched by his loss. My son is named after him. All of my artistic work is done with him somehow in mind. I recently sat down to start writing a new series of poems. A slew of water imagery suddenly poured out on the page, and I realized I was writing about Michael again. And it’s not just an artistic influence. I often find myself channeling his humor, especially his penchant for creating absurd monsters. He wrote a series of radio comedy sketches called “The Rubber Monster Factory”. Whenever I act out a funny monster for my kids, it’s his voice that comes out of my mouth. 

David B. Goldstein is a poet, critic, and food writer, whose books include Eating and Ethics in Shakespeare’s England and the poetry collection Laws of Rest. He lives in Toronto with his family, where he teaches English at York University.

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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

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

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

Why I'm Making Art About Death

When people hear the word ‘grief’, many things come to mind in addition to bereavement, so a lot of people have asked me why I’m focusing only on death in my new project Grief Landscapes. As someone who is deeply interested in people’s stories, and who tends to want to include everyone in everything I do, drawing a line around the project sometimes feels hard. I know there is a lot of pain out there, and I think that pain is often lessened by sharing our stories of loss, no matter what those losses are. 

I’m restricting the scope of the project because the number of stories out there about death alone are overwhelming, but also because I’m deeply curious about how different people learn to live with the specific permanence of death. Maybe it’s also because I’m now in my forties—isn’t that the typical time when we turn to thoughts of the second half of our lives and what’s inevitably in front of us?

Ball, 2001

It’s interesting though, because when I look back at many of my projects, I’ve noticed that I often make a new body of work to deal with specific losses and changes in my life. The first photography project I ever did was documenting old playgrounds in New York City in the fall of 2001, shortly after September 11, when loss and grief had enveloped the city. I didn’t have a direct connection to anyone who died in the terrorist attacks, but it was impossible to be living in New York then and not absorb in some way the impact of those immense losses. In the shadow of all that, I found myself drawn towards documenting these old metal play structures—geometric jungle gyms, a lone merry-go-round, skyscraper slides. 

Slide 2, 2001

I loved those structures because they reminded me of my childhood, which was comforting, and I was also at that point having a quarter-life crisis. I was in my late 20’s, confused about what I was doing with my life, and although it probably sounds naive, it was possibly the first time I was really confronting what it meant to have things change around me so drastically. The inevitability of change ended up becoming literal through the project, as much of the equipment that I photographed was torn down only weeks after I took the photos.

I didn’t set out to do a project about loss, but it ended up becoming one, even if the connection was oblique. The children who ended up in the photographs were cut off, facing away from the camera, or running ghost-like through the frame. The one little girl whose face you see is in a domed cage-like jungle gym and looks a little scared, with an adult figure in black behind her. I ended up calling the project This Playground Closes at Dusk, based on the signs posted at the entrances to the playgrounds.

Child, 2001

In a larger sense I guess I’m continually drawn to making work about what it means to deal with change and loss on multiple levels, and how those changes transform us and our relationship to the world. And I find myself wondering whether one has an easier time dealing with change if you’ve already lived through a specific type of grief about the ultimate change: the disappearance of someone who was in the world, and then wasn’t.

I don’t know where this project will go, and who knows? Maybe there will come a point where I will open Grief Landscapes up to other categories of loss. But for now, I’m finding that there is so much variety and diversity in people’s stories of bereavement, and enough challenge in capturing each unique account, that I’ll have my hands full for a while.

Leave a comment to let me know what you think about the relationship between death and other kinds of loss in your life. Has experiencing the death of someone close to you made it easier to deal with change and loss subsequently?

How to Turn a Poppy Danish Into a Mountain

I’ve had a nice response so far since starting to get the word out about Grief Landscapes, and people’s stories are starting to come in. I’m finding my rhythm, and it’s interesting to see what comes up as I navigate the tricky terrain of interpreting someone else’s grief visually. Primarily I feel very grateful and honored that people are trusting me with their accounts. That can’t be an easy thing to do. And as I’m finding, neither is making an image in response, but I have to say that I’m really enjoying the challenge.

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Poppy Seed Danish, 2015

As I’m shooting a new image, I have to keep in mind three or four goals that I need to reach in order for the photo to be a successful reflection of a person’s grief experience. First, it needs to resemble a landscape, and some objects are easier than others to transform in this way (clothing, fabric, anything with an undulating surface, for example). It feels relatively easy to take a beautiful but non-specific close-up image of a familiar object, because there’s so much there one can’t always see with the naked eye. But to make it even slightly resemble a landscape turns out to be a lot harder.

The second thing I’m aiming for is to have the tone of the image reflect the person’s grief in some way. Sometimes it’s clear, and something jumps out from the text that’s vivid and an obvious path to represent the terrain they’ve described. Other times, their grief unfolds over a longer period and I have to either choose which aspect of the person’s story to portray, or try to get it all in there. I’m also trying to avoid being too literal or obvious, because then I risk veering into the sentimental (something that feels particularly easy to do with a project like this).

The third dimension is whether the photo feels like it truly represents the person it’s about, which emerges from the objects suggested for me to shoot. And sometimes I get that wrong. My friend Jordana submitted a beautifully written account of her father’s death, which followed years of dementia. In her text, she writes about how different she and her father were—he was a Holocaust survivor; a working class, salt-of-the-earth mensch who didn’t always understand her, but loved her deeply and unconditionally. There was a simplicity to her grief, which she recounted. 

For the objects, she suggested a greasy poppy seed danish, which her dad loved to eat, or a ladder, since he had been a roofer. I jumped at the danish, since I thought it would make a really interesting landscape, and it did. The poppy seeds looked like black boulders, and the white icing like glaciers on the side of a mountain. I was using the black and white nature of their relationship as the jumping off point and I was excited to share them with her. But after I did, she gently told me that while the images were beautiful, they didn’t feel like her dad. They were too beautiful, and he was a man with dirt under his fingernails. It just didn’t fit.

So I took another crack with the ladder. I had one in my garage, so I hauled it out and shot it outside from all different angles. This time, it all came together—the straightforward nature of her grief reflected in the straight lines of the ladder and the image, the choice to have a narrow depth of field to reflect the dementia at the end of his life. She thought I had nailed it, and so did I. I still love the danish photos, and it's hard to let them go, but I love the ladder images too, and each image is ultimately a collaboration.

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   Ladder, 2015

I’m excited to keep going, and I look forward to hearing more of your responses as well as starting to share them in the coming months. I also wanted to clarify the object aspect of the project, which some people have been confused about. The object does not have to be something currently in your possession; it can be something in your memory, or an object that represents an aspect of the person. In most cases I am recreating the object anyway (some people don’t actually have anything from the person who died, or what they have wouldn’t work with the text or as a landscape image). Keep the stories coming.