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EXPRESS YOURSELF
Why I Read the Obituaries
You never know when you’ll find the encouragement you needed
For a period of a few months, I spread pages of the Sunday paper under my son’s high chair. Overlooked articles came to my attention as I stooped to clear fallen banana and beans.
One day, splat on tight columns of tiny text: The obituaries, the paid-for kind. The beautiful woman caught my eye, as they do, breezy 1970s center-part, direct gaze into the lens, and a camera in her hands.
Shook, Melissa, devoted single mother who documented her biracial daughter’s life from the age of one to 18. Images from this “Krissy” series were acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, NY. Her kind and artistic spirit is dearly missed.
I ripped the four-inch column from the pages, stuffed the remaining food-stained paper in the trash, and pinned the obituary to my bulletin board.
Her image hovered there for weeks, a talisman of an artist mother looking over me amid the oft-forgotten habit tracker and oft-consulted quotations copied onto index cards from Toni Morrison, Ali Smith, Robert Hass, and our astrological oracle Rob Brezsny. I neglected Melissa Shook as much as the habit tracker.
