In 2017 mum passed away. She was an incredible woman with stories to tell - stories of living in Sydney’s underbelly in the 80’s, being part of the first wave of people to contract HIV, and later travelling the world to set up the first peer to peer responses for women amidst the pandemic. 

We always knew the day would come to say goodbye, but it was still the hardest thing I’ve had to do. In this moment I felt the urge to make her something as a parting gift. So in the final weeks of her life, as we cared for her at home, I took time out to work in the shed, and made a necklace that mum could be cremated in.  

The piece was a large brass chest plate, cut with a proud sun motif, and in the centre sat a piece of ‘spice stone’, stone I’d made from compressing spices and binder into a hard stone. As I made the stone, I thought about the way Ancient Egyptians adorned bodies in spice to preserve their soul.

Thankfully mum got to see the piece before she passed, and tried it on with her death shroud, made from fabric she’d collected while travelling the world. 

These were transitional objects that helped us move through the journey from life to death. They held our memories and offered a tangible way to celebrate mum’s life. Some transitional objects stay as a keep safe for loved ones, like heirlooms that help us stay connected to people we’ve lost, but these were gifts for mum, and it felt cathartic to burn them. But above all this, I think it was the experience of making that helped me the most, it allowed me to process the grief in the best way I knew.