Discovery
28.5” x 26”, 2025
You’re not going to believe this story.
A few months ago, my wife and I took a walk around Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah. If you haven’t been, you’ve probably seen it in movies or the cover of John Berendt’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. It’s spooky but beautiful and scenic, and in the very hot summer the trees provide a thick, shaded canopy that makes it one of the nicest places to spend time in Savannah. We decided to find the grave of the great songwriter Johnny Mercer, and on our way back to our car a strange sight caught our eye. It was a grave covered in Florida Gators regalia, not something you often see in Georgia Bulldogs country. We walked over to check it out, and nothing really could’ve prepared me for whose grave it was: my own father’s, who I never met.
I was raised the only child of a single mom. My father was never part of my life. When I was very little this didn’t really register, but as I saw how other kids lived with different types of families, I started asking questions. My mom never really seemed like she wanted to tell me all that much about him, other than his name. A handful of times she would abruptly share something, most memorably a newspaper article during my teen years about how he was struck by lightning not just once but twice. A few years ago I saw his obituary but had no idea where he was buried or much else about him. My mom is now deep into Alzheimer’s, anything she might’ve told me is long gone. There’s no way to know him more than this, it’s just a void. This piece is composed mostly of photos I took that day at his grave and those of his (and I guess my) ancestors who were buried in the same plot. I don’t know that I’ll ever fully process this experience but working on this was an attempt to make something of it.
28.5” x 26”, 2025
You’re not going to believe this story.
A few months ago, my wife and I took a walk around Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah. If you haven’t been, you’ve probably seen it in movies or the cover of John Berendt’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. It’s spooky but beautiful and scenic, and in the very hot summer the trees provide a thick, shaded canopy that makes it one of the nicest places to spend time in Savannah. We decided to find the grave of the great songwriter Johnny Mercer, and on our way back to our car a strange sight caught our eye. It was a grave covered in Florida Gators regalia, not something you often see in Georgia Bulldogs country. We walked over to check it out, and nothing really could’ve prepared me for whose grave it was: my own father’s, who I never met.
I was raised the only child of a single mom. My father was never part of my life. When I was very little this didn’t really register, but as I saw how other kids lived with different types of families, I started asking questions. My mom never really seemed like she wanted to tell me all that much about him, other than his name. A handful of times she would abruptly share something, most memorably a newspaper article during my teen years about how he was struck by lightning not just once but twice. A few years ago I saw his obituary but had no idea where he was buried or much else about him. My mom is now deep into Alzheimer’s, anything she might’ve told me is long gone. There’s no way to know him more than this, it’s just a void. This piece is composed mostly of photos I took that day at his grave and those of his (and I guess my) ancestors who were buried in the same plot. I don’t know that I’ll ever fully process this experience but working on this was an attempt to make something of it.