God gives Lety only what she can take
Total images: 10 Lety M’s husband and 28-year old son Junior had already died from Huntington’s Disease. Janet, her 26-year old daughter, was now in
Memorial
Joel would rise from Arlington as a dragon
Total images: 4 Joel died before his time battling cancer. Initially his widow Elizabeth brought me a photograph of Joel. However we ended up creating
Vitaly was the travel agent in their marriage
Vitaly always had a taste for adventure — ever since the Soviet Union granted him permission to visit Germany on official business. His wife, though,
Loretta’s mom learned to love her daughter by loving herself
Total images: 9 After her mom died, Loretta stuck all the original photographs in a drawer. “I would look at the photos,” says Loretta, “and
Anne H explains a father’s character flaw to her sibs
Total images: 10 Due to a bad case of wanderlust, Bill abandons his wife and family for nearly two decades. The painting on the clothesline
Simon with the grand-daughter he never met
Total images: 9 Simon, a Holocaust survivor, read the Jerusalem Post religiously and ran the New York Marathon every year. The beautiful etching tinted blue
Janet consults all her Bills from her rocking chair
Janet F, Bill’s widow, is about to “graduate” from her bereavement support group. Yet she still wrestles with loneliness and fear at home and at
Rita knows how to handle her Marlboro men
Roy knew his 81-year old mother was hooked on the idea of artistic photomontages because he saw how they “actually accentuated her happiness!” This was
Whatever you could do, Harold did better
Photos from the family: 4 After years of seeing a therapist, creating a retirement gift as a fine art roast became a refreshingly therapeutic way for
Ann’s 11 gifts from 11 dearly departed
Nurses are often referred to as the “burden-bearers.” No one understood this better than Ann, a nurse still reeling from widowhood and a string of
Little Flynn meets his legendary Uncle Joe
A younger brother who died at age 31 (on the left), Joe is seen toasting his nephew Flynn on his first birthday, named after the
Rita still recalls Albert’s kiss, circa 1954
When Roy commissioned me to compose a 55th anniversary photo gift for his parents Albert and Rita, he definitely wanted a story to fit the