Last month, when I was a featured speaker for a zoom group for people who have lost a sibling to suicide, I was asked if I had been suicidal after my sister’s death. I very much understood the importance of this question– I have heard many times before how people question their own lives because a love one has taken their own. I used to say that the word “suicide” becomes part of your vocabulary in a close and personal way after you lose someone to suicide. And we do know that people who lose a loved one to suicide are at a greater risk of suicide (probably for the same reason I stated in the previous sentence).

Despite all that I’ve been through in the thirty-some years since my younger sister Denise died by suicide, I can honestly say that it had the opposite effect on me– it has made my embrace of life much stronger. And I can see now that it might have also made my embrace of color much stronger, too.

My mom always was a color person so I was raised to understand the importance of color. I remember walking through a now-defunct department store here in Albuquerque and her saying, “The color is dead in here.”

Maybe my embrace of color came from that- the way she noted the lack of color was dead. I know that Denise not being here (and I was 21 when she died- on the cusp of adulthood here and working toward my goals and dreams) has made me feel a stronger need to accomplish my goals and dreams.

The ride hasn’t been easy, no life is, especially when we want to continue to grow and make the most of the time we have here. Color and prints are part of how I do that. I find so much hope and inspiration in them. And they connect me back to the childhood I shared with Denise.