Mapping

WIP

Mapping: according to the Oxford Dictionary: an operation that associates each element of a given set (the domain) with one or more elements of a second set (the range).

This past spring, after many years of searching, my sisters and I finally found out where our maternal grandmother is buried. This shouldn’t be such a big deal. But because she committed suicide, her story was taken from us. She died when my mom was 16. My mom never talked about her. My great aunt and uncle never talked about her as a sister. Her husband, my grandfather never talked about her as his wife or the mother of two. He had another wife by the time I met him. 

Later in life, my mom developed a severe case of bi-polar illness. Part of her treatment was to talk about and look at what happened to her mother. This was the beginning of the story for me. I was 21. 

It was shocking to learn of something so traumatic happening in my family so late in my own life. My mother was so ill and my father was struggling to keep it all together so the subject of my grandmother’s suicide never seemed safe. I also didn’t take advantage of the moments when it might have been safe to ask questions. 

So, when we all finally found her gravesite, a marker of the person that once was, a flood of questions overcame me. Questions that now cannot possibly be answered. Yet, I have an intense need to invent her story for myself. Piece by piece to reconstruct the memories. To weave her back into the narrative. 

I got a map of the graveyard. It’s been hanging on my wall. I wasn’t sure why I found that to be important. To visit that map everyday. I’ve been imagining what it must of have been like for her. What her world was like from 1912 to 1950. What it felt like to her to battle depression during those years. How her parents must have loved her to secretly bury her next to their own burial plots as the rest of her world attempted to erase her shameful story. 

This journey. This mapping of the story of who I am. Finding my place here in Cape May where so much of my family’s history resides. Where I stand now in 2021 with all the knowledge I have gathered. Having the confidence to own where I have been. Tying it all together. Understanding the trauma. Recognising what is mine. These are all the things I have been exploring in my artwork this summer. And I know it’s just the very start.