This Broken Gift
ONE
YEAR
To mark one year from May 17th, 2019, I wrote a letter to frame a video project called "Dear Dad".
It was written as a stamp in the archives that darkness didn’t win.
And like old childhood photos, documenting this season will increase in value over time.
Many things were left unsaid by a long shot. Also, trying to explain COVID-19 to my dad was a comedic experience.
Every detail from how each shot flowed into the next, to the angle, to the timing of the music, to the order of the chapters of the story, to even the significance of the pen I used to write the letter, they were all intentional decisions to create what might only be a brief moment of clarity and comfort for me, and for my family, if and when we need to hear it.
The simultaneous experience of suffering and joy can do nothing more than distort how we feel.
It can’t change what is true; darkness doesn’t win.
It may not always have felt that way, but that didn’t make it any less true.
Grief did not, and will not, have the last word in our lives.
ARCHIVES
