My series, Grief is Not Infinite, explores ambiguous grief; loss without the finality of death or closure. Through personal and metaphoric storytelling, my work examines how one deals with aging, disability of a loved one, and loss of self.

Just as we set out onto a new path, my dearest husband was felled by a burst of blood in his brain changing our world forever. Suddenly our future life was a blank page; all of our plans were upended, forgotten and we had to invent a new life for ourselves. Lives that would be joined, but not always moving together in a single direction. I wanted art to carry part of that burden.

For a long while, my husband felt lost to me, but over time his new embodiment became more visible, more alive, closer to the man I remembered. I began photographing him as a way of remembering and creating some solace, of literally seeing him.

As the pandemic and resulting isolation took hold, we turned inward, as did so many, to focus on new ways of being in the world. Having long experience as a landscape photographer, I was drawn to plant life in woods, parks and neighborhoods. Early in the morning when many places are deserted, I gathered weeds, flowers, insects, stones and sticks to create pictures. Internal and external turmoil marked days of solitude and creation. I worked to see and capture the beauty and transience in images made alone in the studio using alternative processes. The blank canvas of our lives became not an object of fear but of inspiration.

These ways of managing the new direction of our lives coalesced in my most recent work:  seeing myself. Feeling trapped by difficult circumstances, I gave myself permission to look at who I am and how I have gotten here. Living with death and disability so near has challenged me to take control of how I tell my story and show myself to the world. From sadness and anger at where fate has taken me to the great joy and power of being alive, my work lays bare one of the most profound of human experiences: grief.

Seeing in new ways has helped me to come to terms with the ongoing grief of losing my beloved husband and my world, not to death, but to massive transformation. Fate and the rehabilitation of self helped me create a parallel universe where I can see further. There, as I have learned, grief is not infinite.