The grieving of home
Leaving home doesn’t mean leaving the past—grieving, unlearning, and coming to terms with what stays.
Words by Lae Um | Artwork by Mel Dineli
GROWING UP, I was assured that carving out my own space would mean a home dedicated to a clean slate. Yet when I arrived there, I discovered the way I organised my laundry was a direct homage to my mother’s linen closet.
Mel Dineli
Forever Moving, 2024, digital artwork
Home is nuanced, ever-changing, or fleeting in some circumstances. As we grow, we witness ourselves expand, our limbs bend and snap, sometimes we hesitate to peer back over our shoulder at the environment we might label suffocating, safe, or direly non-existent. What might we find if we were given permission to explore the walls of our development? Home becomes entrenched with our identity, whether or not its physical location is accessible to set foot in again. If our concept of home is the amalgamation of how we perceive ourselves, where do we lay to rest when home is impermanent? Whose stories do we carry with us as we mold and reform our concept of home? Is the pattern that we choose to box and unbox with every migration, reminiscent of how our elders package the remains of their day? Do our hands falter to carve a new path, decorating our shelves with nostalgic mementos? If the road ahead demands that we carry the burdens we long to leave behind, what losses have we unknowingly agreed to mourn?
Moving out of home came from an attempt to free myself from the shackles of a fractured home. I vowed that my path forward would not contain the chaos from the walls of my childhood. These same walls failed to prepare me for grieving what I was once certain to leave behind. Amongst the strive to move forward, I had yet to recognise the unconscious notions of home that had latched on to my sense of self. When grief lacks a container it is forced to exist within invisible spaces and I found it lingering between the plates stacked in my dishwasher. It seeped into the load of laundry that neatly hung in my peripheral view during lunch.
Mel Dineli
To Feel at Home, 2024, digital artwork
