Joan Wexler

A Pot From Shards Joan Wexler

June 2008, I logged on-line the name of my long-missing father who I barely knew. I believed the only thing of his that was mine, was his name. Something came onto the screen I had never seen before, a blurry facsimile of his death certificate. Some of it was legible. He died in San Francisco in 1970. That was a complete surprise. There was clearly more information on the screen image, but I couldn't make it out. Writing to the California Board of Health I requested a paper copy. They needed to know my relationship to the deceased. Writing in the word daughter in relation to my father was a unique experience. The paper certificate soon arrived. Everything on the document other than the date of his birth and his profession was a surprise. Suddenly I owned more than his name.

When a parent goes missing how do we shape and fill the empty space?

And how do we shape and create ourselves from our missing parents?

A Pot from Shards, a memoir, explores absence, imagination, movement, dance, language, psychoanalysis, love, death and the creation of a life.