Description: Author CL Francisco illustrates her grief for her cat Mari with pieces of her own artwork.
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Grief is always a painfully slow experience for me to work my way through—grief for my non-human family members as much as for the human ones. Now, 2 months after her death, I’ve finished the third of three digital mosaics of my cat, Mari. Each image has been increasingly complex, each exploring deeper, less articulate levels of my grief. With the completion of the last picture, my farewell feels complete. My grief is taking up residence in memory and only occasionally flashing into the now.
I finished this first mosaic on the night of Mari’s death (“Mari: Doorway into Forever,” above). It was built on an earlier image I’d created more than 10 years ago (see below). In it I find myself grappling with the simple fact of her dying and moving beyond my reach.
The second mosaic, “The Passing of Mari,” (below) I finished two weeks after her death. It reflects on Mari’s own awareness of her living and dying, and the natural place of both in the universe as we experience it.