I’ve been thinking about grief for a long time. How it’s experienced, how we’re taught to express it, and how long it should last…This work took shape in the wake of losing two women in my family—my grandmother and my aunt—within the last two years. I embroidered it slowly, while thinking on all the ways grief is held: aloud or in silence, with words or without. In the end, it was completed when my mother helped fill the empty space I had left.
The embroidery I altered, multiplied, and re-stitched belongs to my grandmother. She had created curtains with it as a young woman in an evening crafts course. When she married, my grandfather told that one day they would build their own home. So she never hung the curtains in the house they lived in—instead, she folded them away in a chest, saving them for the future house. A fire later destroyed almost everything they owned. The next day, neighbors sifting through the remains found the curtains: scorched at the edges, but with pieces of embroideries still intact.They brought them to my grandmother. She kept those remnants for the rest of her life. One of the pieces passed on to my mother, and eventually to me.
How is grief held? Is the loudest grief the deepest one? Does the way we mourn pass down through generations? I'm still questioning.
The embroidery I altered, multiplied, and re-stitched belongs to my grandmother. She had created curtains with it as a young woman in an evening crafts course. When she married, my grandfather told that one day they would build their own home. So she never hung the curtains in the house they lived in—instead, she folded them away in a chest, saving them for the future house. A fire later destroyed almost everything they owned. The next day, neighbors sifting through the remains found the curtains: scorched at the edges, but with pieces of embroideries still intact.They brought them to my grandmother. She kept those remnants for the rest of her life. One of the pieces passed on to my mother, and eventually to me.
How is grief held? Is the loudest grief the deepest one? Does the way we mourn pass down through generations? I'm still questioning.
