Memory is best evoked at locations
that hold personal connections. For
example, a childhood home or the home of a relative or friend. Memory is also followed by great emotion of a
time that used to be, but is now in the past.
In my case, memory is evoked in a small town located within Spartanburg,
South Carolina. The small town,
Gramling, was the home of my grammy who, at a rather young age, passed away
from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, or commonly known as ALS. However, despite the sadness that comes with
her memory and the idea of returning to her home, she is still very close to my
heart. For this reason, I have
memorialized her and everything that she stands for in a simple blue and white,
palm-like shrine, as representation of her home state, and as a reminder of her
fight with ALS.
Both
the colors found on South Carolina’s flag and the colors that represent the ALS
foundation, blue and white, cover the shrine.
This is complemented by the tree and flower design that resembles the
South Carolina palm tree found on the flag, as well. The simple design of the shrine is meant to
display the elegance and simplicity of my grammy, as well. She was a lawyer for domestically abused
children and helped all her clients with such class and delicacy. This quality was one of many, but one of her
strongest. This quality also made her
into the woman she was, so it is the foundation of design for the shrine. The use of leaves and a tree branch in the
design also represent the idea of life.
In many ways, the shrine is a “living” memorial, as the objects were
once alive (the leaves probably still are, considering they were recently
picked). I found it very important to
incorporate this idea of life into the shrine, because the life my grammy led
was one of humility and compassion. The
shrine represents my beliefs that if I were to live a life she did, or even one
that was equal to half her accomplishments, I would be content.
The
final component to my shrine are the offerings.
If I were to visit the shrine, I would leave dog bones. While this may seem odd, animals, and
especially dogs, were a very big part of my grammy’s life. In fact, within the sixteen years of my life
that she was alive, she had housed a total of twenty dogs on her plantation, as
well as one cat. Whether they be from
the shelter down the street, an unexpected liter in the crate one morning, or
just showing up in her front yard with her many other dogs welcoming it to the
family. How open she was to adopting
these animals into her family has been my favorite thing about her. I have always admired her big heart and
kindness after watching her family grow bigger every time I came down to
visit. A shrine that did not recognize
this impeccable quality of hers would be a shrine done wrong.
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