24x30 Acrylic/ Gel/ Glitter/ Gold Leaf/ Silver Leaf/ Mirror/ Art Resin. Ready to hang. 

It was some version of a spring day on the outskirts of Chicago - bright for once but unpredictable as usual. I was in town with headphones on, the Pandora app flipping songs as aimlessly as I was walking through bright green cemetery grass. I held a $53 Portillo’s order in a wrinkled red and white paper bag. A hamburger with no cheese and no tomato, a hot dog with everything, cheese fries, and a beef & cheddar croissant for me. My dad would have a fit at how much more everything already cost, not even a year after his passing. The food had long since gone cold. I was on some edge of the planet at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Alsip, Illinois. I loved Alsip as a kid because there was a water tower that looked just like a very fancy ice cream cake that was always on tv commercials. I thought the two were connected. 

I never make plans really because when I show up, the plans rarely feel the way I imagined they would when I’m organizing my time. This day was no different.  But, I figured, since I was in town for my best friend's wedding shower, it was the least I could do to buy my dad his favorite hamburger and go visit his grave. 

When I came up with the idea to have a picnic there I guess I thought that it would feel comforting, or I would feel more present with my Dad. Whatever I expected, it wasn’t what I felt. All I felt was rage because I couldn’t find his headstone anywhere. I had been walking around for an hour. Something about it made me feel like a little girl again - probably because I only came here when I was very young to visit my grandmother's grave. I always loved the aluminum spinning fans, bright flowers, and decorations on the graves. I remember hoping that people would cover my grave in shiny, colorful junk and stuffed animals someday too if I died early. It all seemed to stretch on forever. What I mostly loved back then was that there was a Rainbow Cone right across the street. A rainbow cone is a mythical six-scoop ice cream cone that is impossible to find but does exist. My Dad loved getting those for me and laughing at how fast my Mom and I ate them. 

Finally, in a fit of rage and frustration, I decided to give up on trying to find a frickin plot of stone in the ground at the edge of the earth that represented half of the people that brought me to this planet. I started to cry, gazed around the cemetery, and then began to really ugly cry as the reality of what the hell I was even doing there and why started to once again set in. 

After a good cry - of which I would be mortified if anyone had been around me - I opened my eyes. At the same time the Norman Greenbaum song “Spirit in the Sky” started playing in my headphones. That unmistakable guitar riff. My eyes focused on the ground for a moment, and right at my feet was my dad’s headstone. So I cried some more, until I laughed, and sat down to eat the cold food anyway as I listened to that song. He used to always say “You fly I’ll buy” so I’d go get us food. 

“I mean this is a bit much,” I said to the air between the headstone and I. “I guess you fly and I buy now. I wasn’t the best daughter, that’s for sure, but thanks for the song and the laugh.” 

I’ll probably never go back to that cemetery. The only significance they hold to me are the memories of the most dissociative and sad days of my life. And crying my fucking eyes out to Norman Greenbaum and eating a cold Portillo’s order for two. So at least my Dad made sure I had one good memory of a cemetery. 

This painting is a portrait of the light of the power of synchronicity and change. A portrait of the phases of transformation, acceptance, and feeling what you can’t see, even when you can’t find or feel what is right in front of you. They can contrast and radiate bigger than the whole sky and all the stars, all the suns, and all the moons. In this canvas, I see such a process of life. Going in bright, and coming out bright too - just different and back to the place that’s the best over, and over, and over again.