Kasia Nikhamina was born in Poland and came of age in New York City. She earned a BA in Comparative Literature at Columbia University.
We are coming up on the one-year anniversary of our mother being hospitalized with COVID.
I wrote about our mother’s illness and her death earlier this year for Intima and The Audacity.
Friends and strangers wrote to me, said I would put into words what they could not express about their own losses.
Sometimes a work of art can mediate between us and our experience. Having done that for others, I will now try it for myself…
In the Spring 2022 issue of Intima, Soren Glassing, a chaplain at a New York City hospital, shared “COVID Tribute Posters.”
Glassing writes, “During COVID with the sheer amount of people dying, we set up a small hospice in our hospital so patients could die in comfort and peace… We’d contact the family of the dying patient, and gather information, such as their favorite color, their achievements, an image or symbol they loved, and descriptive qualities.”
Using this information, Glassing created a tribute poster for the patient and hung it above their bed.
These beautiful vibrant posters make me think of tarot cards. But instead of telling the future, they celebrate the original person in the present tense. The posters seem to be hand-lettered and hand-drawn. They are an intentional moment of attention. One human to another: “I see you.”
Mateo has a sweet tooth, loves his black cat named Coal. Mary is happiest working in the barn, is not afraid to get dirty. Ernesto is good at plumbing, he loves chocolate pudding. Sonique, half-Spanish, half-Cuban, likes the Jackson 5 and Chaka Khan.
Seeing just twenty of them together—overwhelming.
In the United States alone, we lost over a million people to COVID.
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One day, while our mother slept and snow whited out the view of the East River, my sister hung family photos on the wall opposite our mother’s ICU bed.
I think about our mother opening her eyes, studying the photos.
I think about what scenes played on the back of her eyelids, as she rested with her eyes closed, between sips of smoothie or Ensure, while outside her line of sight, a monitor displayed her many breaths per minute.
Aniela. Mother of three girls. Loves coffee and cake. Loves shopping and gardening. Crochets delicate doilies and does needlepoint reproductions of famous paintings. Knits sweaters and hats. Listens to Andrea Bocelli and Céline Dion. Watches romance movies. Wears silk scarves and perfume. Prolific writer of cards and letters, always has the prettiest stamps and fresh-cut flowers.
Kasia Nikhamina was born in Poland and came of age in New York City. She earned a BA in Comparative Literature at Columbia University. For ten years, she has run Redbeard Bikes, a bike fit studio and shop in Brooklyn, with her husband. She is working on a collection of personal essays and a novella. Her essay “What else can I give you?” was published on Roxane Gay’s The Audacity in October 2022. Subscribe to Kasia's TinyLetter “Extraordinary Time” at www.kasianikhamina.com.