Lessons from Lockdown: The Memorial Maker

As the coronavirus pandemic wore on throughout 2020 without an end in sight, artist Tucker Bradley decided to use her creativity to help her neighbors process their grief. In Oct. 2020, she converted the fence in front of her house into a COVID-19 memorial to honor the first 200,000 coronavirus deaths in the US. By January, she had to update it again as the numbers rose. Since then, each month, she makes changes to the fence to reflect the times. "Things are changing so fast," she said. "For me, it's just a way to not feel so crazy and hopeless."
Bradley's neighbors enjoy the memorial. As they pass by it on walks, they stop to look at it, add memorabilia from their loved ones, or chat with the artist herself. "People send me notes saying, 'Thank you so much for doing that. I came by and looked at it and I didn't realize how much I needed to do that.' And that's kind of why I did it," said Bradley.
Now, she feels more hope. She has both doses of the vaccine, and sees the world coming back to life around her. As a reflection of that, she's added mirrors and more plants, consolidating the memorial to just one section of the fence. "My goal will just be to enhance it and make it prettier and prettier and prettier until it's something to rejoice about instead of something to feel really really sad about," she said. "Less of a war memorial and more of a shrine."