45429+21+1

My mom died on May 17, 2024. 45429 is the result of entering 5/14/2024 into Excel, then converting the date to a general number. My original intention going forward was to post every Friday—every seventh day—a photo taken that day for as long as I wanted (or needed) to. Incidentally, 7 is also the number by which I count back from 100 to stave off panic.

Life gets in the way sometimes and yesterday afternoon/evening after work mostly involved laundry and cleaning my apartment in anticipation of guests who might stop over before or after my mom’s memorial gathering. (However, as a general rule, I try to clean every Friday.) Then I watched an episode of Eric on Netflix. This morning, though, while folding laundry, I found my photos. Something about the blurriness of fairly complicated grief, the conundrum present in the question, “How are you doing?” which I mostly find impossible to answer, or maybe I don’t want to offer a response, because none feels complete. And then, something else about the only clarity I can find arriving with the lack of pressure inherent in more solitary scenes where no need exists to so much as place myself in the frame. Literally or figuratively. One way or another. This way or that.

Blurry (almost seasick) vertical image of a dining room/study area with white wooden bookshelves laden with books, colorful wall art, a gray litter box and mat, and the end of a white table with a printer on it in the background. In the foreground, a white metal dry rack sparsely hung with clothes: sports bras, a pair of cotton underwear with a floral print rimmed in bright orange and yellow, a gray t-shirt, a black tank top, and orange running shorts with white piping. All set against a golden brown wooden floor. A dark brown wooden door in the background dividing the dining area from the kitchen. How grammar can also always write out autobiography. The implication of the continuous—none of this is simple.

The focus sharpens. A clearer vertical image taken in a bedroom (where the laundry gets put away in the dresser and closet, both out of frame). In the upper lefthand corner: a white wooden nightstand with books, a box of tissues, several small spray bottles (lavender mist, dry mouth relief), a black smartphone connected to a white charger, a large bottle of lube. A white wooden headboard with white railings, bedding (duvet cover and pillowcases with stripes of soft denim blue and blowzy, beach-cotton white), a menagerie of stuffed animals (a huskie, one yellow and one black Angry Bird, a set of hugging monkeys, a frog, a guinea pig—plus a few others not quite visible). A pair of pink plaid (kariert) sleep shorts purchased at the Galeria Kaufhof department store in Bonn during a particularly hot summer. A black camera bag on the upper righthand side of the bed. (Process equalling comfort but also, always, proof of life.) All bathed in early morning, gray-day light plus a comfortable, soothing wash of cool shadow. Cream-white wall behind the bed and nightstand. Centered above the bed on that wall: a single, rectangular print of a Caspar David Friedrich painting framed in dark wood and portraying a solitary figure in a long coat (Mantel) and a broad, flat hat standing under moonlight with bowed head before a large horizontal slab of rock.

The focus softens but doesn’t blur haywire. Vertical shadow of the laundry drying rack, shot from the opposite direction, now with the living room in the background. Slight grain to some of the objects in the background, which include a bank of windows with closed Venetian blinds letting in scant, low, early morning light (more shadow and dark), a router in the far corner of the living room just below part of a framed print of the Caravaggio version of Judith beheading Holofernes, a black and gray exercise bike, a blue plastic cat toy, neon yellow-green dumbells, a cat’s scratching post, and (closer to the front) a dark gray-blue puffy sofa topped with fluffy white throw pillows and a folded red and blue flannel quilt. Behind the dry rack, a golden-brown wood floor partially covered by a cream area rug featuring a symmetrical blue and sepia swirly design meant to approximate (probably without success) the look and feel of a Persian rug. In the foreground, the now mostly-empty laundry rack bears only a number of ankle socks packed together in a few places. Everywhere else on the rack: empty space.