‘Letters to Sarah’ is one grieving father’s ongoing project to remember a young mother
WOODWARD, Okla. (KFOR) — As a framer, Larry K. Hill is a master at putting special moments or beautiful pictures into perspective.
Wood and glass, clean windows, crystallize and preserve other peoples’ memories.
“It’s cool,” he tells us inside a century old building where his gallery and workspace occupy two floors, “A lot has happened here.”
As an artist, he’s good at capturing the Oklahoma wind movement in watercolor and oil.
“Emotions have sound and color,” he insists, “and I try to include that.”
But there is one project he’s still working on. It’s a difficult one, but his most important. He comes to it when a thought strikes, a sudden memory or strong emotion.
Hill says, “the thing is in the doing.”
It’s been nearly eight years since his daughter Sarah died suddenly. Leaving behind two young children, a husband, a mother and father — stricken with grief.
“She was 27 years old. It was a blood clot,” he states. “It was sudden.”
“I describe the experience and becoming undone,” he said.
Larry wrote his first letter after she passed. Then, as he began the hard work of framing his own grief, he wrote more. “Dear Sarah,” he reads from his latest letter, “Guilt and loss…”
Letters to Sarah frame his feelings, updates on how her children are doing, and his own memories.
“…I’m unsure as to what to do to help your kids. I can’t do anything but hold your mom…and listen.”
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“Anyway,” he pauses. “I paint.”
“I wanted to express how I love her….through everyday stories.”
There are more than 30 of them, written and illustrated, then hung on a workshop wall in the order of his choosing. Beginning, middle, no end just yet.
“For me,” he says, “It’s just my process of dealing with her loss.”
Hill doesn’t know yet what he might do with this framing project. He’s thought about putting them in a book, or putting together an exhibit, or leaving them right where they are.
Here is a daughter, a wife, a mother, very much alive on these pages.
“Of course she is. She’s right here,” he says pointing to his heart.
“What is the worth of a person but through your memories of them?”
For more information on Larry K. Hill the artist or his shop in Woodward go to his Facebook page here.
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