YOU WERE LOVE(D) BEFORE YOU WERE HERE

A love letter to my present-loved future children.

Amar, de todo jeito é bom, de todo jeito é ruim. Anyway, love is good, anyway, love is bad. Mom told me that is what her grandmother used to say.

She also told me I asked Vovó Elvira not to die, after Vovó Rita and Bisavó Lourdes passed away within three months of each other. She was, after all, the last grandma I had left. I was seven.

I don’t remember saying that, but this fear of loss stuck with me all the way to when both Vovô Edivaldo and Vovô Carlo passed during the pandemic, while I was away. I knew this could happen, so I photographed them to exhaustion — theirs, not mine — before I left.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that I was photographing them for you. I was documenting something I wish you could witness and experience: the love you come from. A love that anyway is good, anyway is bad. A love you have been a part of, long before you were here.