I was happy and free and single one minute, then in love and terror and raising a brain damaged autistic child with violent tendencies the next (more or less). She had a fascination with zippers, and I had a fascination with neurology. We both had epilepsy. I learned that her brain damage looked like black dots spread out all over the MRI scan of her brain representing the areas where there was no neural activity. I always saw Seanna’s brain as a maze of her beloved zippers; some of them opened, and some of them didn’t. We were always surprised, not always pleasantly, by what we discovered behind the zippers we couldn’t close. But she was so beautiful anyway even in her outrageousness. She was an outrageous child and we loved her desperately for it.

Losing an ordinary child is one thing. Losing an autistic child, or a child with a brain injury, is like losing your secret entranceway into a whole other fascinating world where everything has life in it if you only look closely enough, and listen intently enough, and wait long enough.

Other people always figure prominently in the life of an impressionable child. All impressions become expressions eventually. Even months after she has left me she matters to her community. I was sewing this artpiece in Jackson Square while waiting for a friend when the owner of an alteration shop saw what I was doing and heard the story behind the artwork. He introduced me to his seamstress and gave me a bag of zippers because they wanted to be a part of the process of my grieving and letting go and hanging on and loving her. The bright lime green zipper running unimpeded from stem to stern in the piece is one of their contributions. I didn’t realize until then that the art was missing a strong, bold, and unbroken line running through to represent the very essence of Seanna’s being; that which was not a syndrome, was not ‘damaged’, not ‘a result of’.

Seanna, may you rest in this piece, my love.