When I adopted my beloved cat Beatrix, my greatest fear was losing her. I’d walk to the vet clutching her carrier to my chest, the door pressed to my heart. No way of escape. She left me in a different way, through a genetic heart disease common to her breed. Prior to Bea’s passing, I believed in complete nothingness after death—fade to black, the end. But after she died, I desperately wanted to believe that she was still out there somewhere. All that personality and love—all that energy—had to be somewhere, right?

I began the first year of my MFA program at the School of Visual Arts ready to obsessively immerse myself into this new world while still nursing the gaping wound of Bea’s passing. For Viktor Koen’s Story Adaptation class, we were told to make a series of work adapting the text of “Ghost Birds” by Karen Russell. I was drawn to this line:

We have so much more to learn from [the ghosts of birds]. How to pierce the smoke wall of our dulled sense and lift into the unknown. How to navigate the world to come.

“The world to come,” or the afterlife, so to speak. I began to formulate an idea about making an illustrative quilt exploring different possibilities of Bea’s current whereabouts. I’ve been enraptured @dr.emma.esq’s quilts since I first came across her work and I wanted to try my hand at making one. I was also attracted to the physicality of a quilt—it could act as a surrogate body for the one I missed so much.

Each square of “The Moon Is In the Wrong Place” (a title borrowed from Shannon and the Clams’ most recent album dealing with the sudden death of the lead singer’s fiancé) speaks of a different form of afterlife. The ending square—most everyone’s favorite—ends with Bea and me returned to stardust, walking off into the great unknown together. Reunited at last for whatever comes next.

At the reception for the gallery show, a friend told me about the Ancient Greek concept of katasterismos, the transformation of a mythological hero or creature into a star or constellation. How beautifully and timelessly human it is to place our loved ones amongst the stars.

This quilt didn’t answer my questions but it did give me the time and space to honor Bea’s life and reconcile that while her earthly body and spirit are no more, she lives on in the stars and in my stories. Afterlife, after Bea’s life. This life is worth living, full of people to love, things to draw, stories to read, and roads to run. I feel so lucky to be here, in this body, in this moment.

Ways of Bea-ing #41: right here, right now.

Quilt, 90 x 90 inches, 2025-6