During the pandemic, we’ve all been thinking about death. Some of us have lost a loved one in isolation without being able to say goodbye. It can be scary and lonely to think about dying, but talking to each other about people who are gone and even writing to those people can help. Have you ever had someone you love die? If you had one more chance to talk to a dead loved one, what would you say? Artist Selva Aparicio is gathering letters to lost loved ones to bring together into a book to help us feel connected to one another while thinking about death.

Talking about death can make us feel sad. It can also be a chance to celebrate our love for other people and the important mark they’ve left on our lives. When someone we care about dies, they leave behind lots of things—memories, stories, objects, recipes, and beliefs—that continue to have an impact on the world. Death is the end of someone’s life, but not of our love for them or their impact on us.

Selva Aparicio makes art about memory, death, intimacy, and mourning, and she uses dead or discarded materials like cicada wings in her artwork. In order to make her artwork in The Long Dream, she took casts, or molds, of dead human bodies that were donated to research. When people die, we can choose to give our bodies to schools and hospitals so that other people can learn more about how human bodies work. The scientists and artists who study these bodies treat them with respect and care, even if they didn’t know the people when they were living. Even after death, our bodies can continue to help other people. By using the remains of people and animals who have died, Selva’s art helps us consider how living things are transformed by death, not erased.