Life without you

This is a self-portrait of myself pregnant with a portrait of my grandparents with the quilt my grandmother told me I would get a few days before she died from coronavirus. At 37-weeks pregnant, I felt anger growing inside of me like wild weeds. My anger was centered around my grandmother Betty's death that happened in January 2021. She died while visiting my father and I during her annual winter trip to Florida. If it wasn't for coronavirus, she would be holding my son this coming Christmas. She would tell him how much she loves him, and I would have photos of them together. It hurts to know those memories will never happen. I called her on Christmas Day 2019 to tell her the news of my pregnancy. She was in the hospital with COVID, but I would hear the excitement in her voice. She told me I would get the quilt she stitched nearly 15 years ago. She was holding onto it until one of her grandchildren had a child in wedlock. While my grandmother had many great-grandchildren, I was the first to become pregnant in the traditional sense of a marriage. I took this portrait as a way to deal with my delayed anger over her death. My grandfather Charlie died from leukemia in 2018.