My mom was French. She was an immigrant in the US since the ripe age of 18 to the day she passed at 60, though she always held on strongly to her French accent, her love of butter and the word merde. She was the youngest of 3, with 2 older brothers whose idea of a prank was leaving fistfuls of tiny snakes in her bed for her to come home to. Her mother was a seamstress who loved dark chocolate, playing solitaire and smoking Gauloises cigarettes in their tiny bathroom. Her father was a factory worker who my mom called ‘big bear’ (she was ‘little wolf’), he was very tall, playful and cried easily.

My mom was creative to the bones. She could write better in English than most Americans I know. She was fiercely loving, stubborn, funny, spontaneous, passionate and always the best dancer in the room.

This is the beginning of a piece of prose I wrote for my mother, Pascale. The images below were a first attempt at capturing some of her story, her strength, her deep love in my photography. To create these images, I used pieces of her clothing (she loved clothes and 8 years after her passing I’m still going through boxes of it), old family photos, some of her writing, and photos I took at the swimming pool near her home in Ojai, CA.

It’s all a work-in-progress, just like how the process of grieving someone you love so dearly is on-going. There is so much to tell, to share, to celebrate about her. Here is a glimpse.

Je t’aime, maman.

Ojai, November 2020.