Going Outside: A Ceremony (2020)
Hanbok mask + text by Christy NaMee Eriksen
Photography by Kaley McGoey
Grief is a lot like quarantine; that is, you shelter in place for a long long time. And place might be your house or it might be a moment or it might be a feeling and you just, you just don’t leave.
After my dad died, I felt six thousand feet away from anyone. When you grieve someone, you remember them, and when you remember them you hold all your memories close. I thought that if I stepped out from under that grief I would also step away from my father, which was too unbearable to try.
One time my friend Conor thought we should go on a drive, and because I never went anywhere without it, he helped me put my grief in the car. It was a special occasion, going out, and it reminded me that I wanted to buy a blender. We went to the store, which I had not done in awhile.
It was early in the pandemic so most people were buying hand sanitizer and toilet paper, not blenders and ugly houseplants like the small weeping tree I put in my shopping cart, but we all have our essentials when a world ends.
Because our breath was precious, the CDC recommended wearing face coverings. I made mine out of hanbok fabric, our Korean ceremonial dresses, to mimic the presentation of grief in the time of covid.
In covid you are afraid to die, in mourning you are afraid to live. In both, going outside is a ceremony.
