Cole Imperi: My name is Cole Imperi, and I'm a thanatologist. Thanatology is the study of death, dying, grief, and loss.
We are looking at a sculpture called Grief. You see a woman dropped down on both of her knees, palms outstretched, as if she is pushing away two walls that are crunching her in between.
When I first saw this piece, I immediately had flashbacks to times in my life where I'd gotten bad news about the loss of someone or something, and I remember the experience of just dropping to my knees. It's just the way that my body responded to trying to comprehend the unthinkable.
By the time that we all live a long time, unfortunately, we are all going to have collected a lot of losses, deaths of people and animals that we love, jobs, careers, marriages, relationships. Grief is there to help you. It's the loss that hurts you, and the grief comes in to help you get through it.
To anyone that is experiencing grief right now, I just want you to know that grievers have produced and created some of the most beautiful things that we have in the world.Grief helps us never forget the people that we love and pieces like this are an opportunity for us to revisit moments in our own lives.