Squeeze Her Hand

About the Work

Squeeze Her Hand is a collection of recorded interview excerpts and original music that investigates the concepts of grief, commemoration, isolation, and loss during the COVID pandemic. Based on a true story, the narrative follows a household as they explore the love and subsequent loss of their Bubbe, an important figure to each member of the family for her various roles as a mother, mother-in-law, and grandmother. Real and deeply personal interview excerpts from the group ground the music in reality, and within the impossibility of connection during the time of the virus and quarantine.

Almost 7 million people have died of COVID worldwide. There are so many stories that remain untold, sealed behind walls of sadness and grief, and paralyzed by judgemental thoughts. But the lives of the people we lose are no less spectacular or important than the highest forms of art; they remain towering figures of myth and legend, gods and deities of our own lives, immortalized in the colossal monuments of memory. The depth and significance of their existence deserves the same treatment as any Greek epic, Hollywood blockbuster, or classical symphony.

I can’t hope to understand or speak for everyone in grief, but I do feel that humans are wired to celebrate each other's lives. We are wired to build cities in our minds for those we love, carving and shaping every special moment into a stained glass window of its own. We are wired to remember. And I will remember my Bubbe.