Mom's Records

Role: Writing
Period: 2017–present

A seven-inch record labeled Let’s Live for Today by the Grass Roots, on Dunhill Records. — Let’s Live for Today by the Grass Roots.

After my mom died in 2016, I had to decide what to do for an obituary. I wrote a lengthy one for the Detroit Free Press, but then called them up and found out how insanely expensive it is to get anything except a blurb. I didn’t feel like cutting the obituary down, so I decided to go a different route, one my mom would’ve appreciated more anyway: a writing project called Mom’s Records. The idea was to take something I enjoyed with my mom—her collection of records from the sixties—and use each one as a prompt to reflect on my mom’s life and my life with her. It’s been a generative project and the most emotionally open thing I’ve ever done.

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A handwritten index of artists and song titles stored in a record case. — My mom's handwritten record index.

Three open record cases with numbered dividers. — The record collection.