Shrine- Maggie Sands

I decided to create my shrine to Claire Wagonhurst, a young woman who went to my high school in the year below me. My school was relatively small, and although I wasn't very close with her, I distinctly remember seeing her in the halls because she was always smiling and laughing. Diagnosed with adolescent melanoma as a result of hormonal changes during puberty her freshman year of high school, she went through treatments on and off over the next few years. Few people, myself included, knew about her cancer until her senior year when she was only able to attend a few days of class. October 16, 2014, Claire passed away. It was one day after she had been accepted to her top choice school, the University of Alabama.

            Claire never wanted her illness to define her. In her college application, she said, “cancer would not define me…nope, this was merely a bump in my road; a detour perhaps, but nothing that would keep me from my goals.” She wanted to be a normal teenager without showing off her disease. In my shrine, I am commemorating her as an individual separate from the cancer that took her life. While her family started the Claire Marie Foundation in her honor to spread awareness of adolescent melanoma, I chose to intentionally leave out anything representing her illness. She wanted to be remembered as a normal high school girl.

            Claire’s favorite color was coral, which was appropriate because she had such a warm and bubbly personality. For that reason, I chose to make my shrine out of coral fabric. Claire wanted to study interior design, but was also very interested in fashion and her dream was to open a boutique. That was another reason why I chose fabric, and to stitch her name into it. I left the needle in the fabric, intentionally incomplete to represent a life cut short and a story that was not yet finished. The individual stitches in her name represent the people she brought together both during and after her life.

            One thing that really struck me was a remark from our headmistress following Claire’s death. She said that she expects the students, especially the senior class, to remember Claire at each milestone toward graduation. However, she said that it will be a presence, not an absence, that they will note. Although simple, I wanted my shrine to be a tangible item that can be carried and act as symbolic substitution for Claire herself: it becomes something present rather than a reflection of Claire’s absence. Having gone to a Catholic, all-girls school, this idea of presence vs. absence is also very important to me. I believe that Claire truly was there with her class through their last year of high school, following them to college and beyond and watching over them from Heaven. This shrine serves as a reminder that she is looking down on us, and that we should live our lives more like Claire.