In April 2021, my oldest sister Ruth underwent a 7-hour neurosurgery operation for brain bleeds. The operation was successful, by all accounts. The bleeding had been stanched. 

“We know that there is always a risk with neurosurgery. The brain is very complicated.” 

Within two months, my sister was gone.

She died at 05:55, as the sun was rising, on June 19, 2021 in Naples, FL. Her husband was in the room, but he had turned away for just a moment and missed the last breath. The final, “Oh!”, the surprise of what lay ahead, perhaps, or the maybe the wonder of how easy it was to simply let go. 

I arrived five minutes too late to hold her hand and let her go, but I had spent time with Ruth in the previous few days and, although she was non-verbal by that point, she squeezed my hand when I told her I was there. And I believe she heard me when I said, “Ruth, you were enough. You were always enough. Mom’s and Dad’s disappointments were their own, not yours. I love you. You’ll always be my big sister.”

In the days and weeks that followed, I watched as the flowers I received in sympathy gradually dried and faded. Then fell. Turned to a sickly sweet powder. 

Mori Flores, dead flowers, I saw Ruth’s face in one of the tulips. I felt the papery dry petals and found some comfort in what is truly our destiny as living beings and things on this earth. 

In their passing, they are most vulnerable and most memorable. 

These images are printed as archival pigment prints on Hahnemühle paper .
Editions of 10 numbered prints (9 x 11 print on an 11 x 14 sheet),
signed, numbered and dated by the artist.