After the death of my daughter

Throughout the IB course I am telling students to make connections. Here is one mother's journey. I look at it from time to time. "After the death of my daughter I thought clean lines would repel me forever: the crisp triangulations of hospital sheets, the white oblong of her bed. Instead it was emotional incoherence of clutter that I found unbearable: cups and glasses, pieces of paper. I cleaned out her drawers,unmade her bed, painted over the bumps and grinds of wheelchair marks in the hall. Outside it snowed. Through the terrifying white I went to the Donald Judd Exhibition at the Tate. Here space and light lifted me. I could look up for the first time, feel free to feel nothing. The works are not clinical. The coloured perspex is warm, the shadows they cast are subtle and changing. The polished metal shines, the granite is flecked with light, the copper mirrored sides reflect back and forth until everything and nothing is caught there. I am caught there. A flicker of movement. A shadow. Someone coming out of shadows. Someone who walks in the world." Jenny Vuglar. The Observer. 26th December 2004. London