I confront grief by giving it form. Deaths are losses, and losses are deaths — brief encounters that freeze an ocean of emotion into a monolith, reaching the deepest floor of the soul. Throughout life, I have lost many: great‑grandmother, aunts, great‑uncles, grandmother, close friends, in‑laws, my father, an unborn nephew, a niece still a child, and a nephew already a man.

In a recent “short encounter,” I chose to place my grief into glass. When I looked inward, entities emerged. Narcissus appeared first — not as a man, but as his reflection in the water, in the instant he sees himself and ceases to be human. Borders dissolve; the body disappears; something else may bloom.

Then came feminine figures: the Moon, Yemanjá, Medusa — until I recognized Luctus, or Penthos, the Daemon of grief, adorned with tears of pure Bohemian crystal. I realized how naïvely I had imagined tears as the richness of Goddesses alone.

These works are Carnival standards, ornaments, oversized earrings for an invisible Bacchus. I see myself celebrating Carnival in Ipanema while working with the glass of my Bohemian crystal valley — beads from Kamenický Šenov, the jewelry tradition of Jablonec. I merge my two worlds to create adornments of mourning.

Grief is cold, heavy, suffocating. Yet I choose to look not at the void, but at the fortune of having existed in the same time and space as those who left.

Photo: Filip Šváha