Individual Residencies
2022 | Sandra O’Donnell
Memories float up unbidden and unwanted. They catch in my throat, welling up behind my eyes. There is the memory of the day I met Kim, us in Ireland, the way mine hand felt in his, the bittersweet memory of our last kiss, Kim on the floor of the bathroom unable to move. No! I will not retain that memory.
I make myself breathe. Deeply, slowly, in and out, in and out, in and out. I visualize Kim on the floor. I turn the image into a sheet of paper. I fold it over and over in my mind, turning it into a piece of memory origami. It becomes a paper memory bird, maybe a crow. In my mind, I see myself taking out a pair of sharp scissors. I cut the origami crow into confetti. I visualize myself blowing the memory away. I will not remember Kim that way.
Facing this loss, figuring out how to move on, is going to take all my superpowers. It will take everything I’ve learned over the years. It will take every internal resource I have. It will require taking myself apart and putting me back together, yet again.
Excerpt from my memoir
Loss and renewal are at the heart of both of the writing projects I worked on while at The Museum of Loss and Renewal. My work on grief is aimed toward revisioning grief, not as a set of linear steps we must climb but rather as part of life’s journey, complete with guides, signposts, and new phases of life.
I was finishing a memoir tentatively titled A Stacked Deck, that dives deep into the loss of partners, identity and life plans. Loss and renewal also resonate through my second book, about a group of Puritans from Scrooby, England that claimed religious persecution and prosecution as their reason for leaving England for Holland and then America. Rather than allow the journey to a new land to renew their faith, they fell into a narrative of loss, which I considered in relation to events in American society today.