I have been thinking about Mom while doing 29 Butterflies, 2013, even though the images aren’t explicitly about her.  It is both harder and easier than the first year after she died.  By now, I am accustomed to not hearing her voice anymore, but the longer I live without seeing her, the more I recognize that I am still waiting for her to come back.  Lately, I have been feeling so deeply what her loneliness must have been like – how much I think it surprised her to find herself lacking company.  And of course, it hurts me now to think how what I have learned from dealing with my grief would have balanced and softened our relationship, and thus given her comfort.

So I keep working on these butterflies – hoping, hoping, hoping, that she can still hear me.