For my sister on a tragic annivesary.

It's been 3 years as of today, and I'm sure the pain of her 19 year old daughters death is as fresh as it was then. I only hope that the joy she has in raising her grandson, son of her dead daughter, helps her live on.
Containment
I've heard it said that an object one makes with their own hands absorbs and retains the thoughts and feelings of the maker for all eternity. I look now at the ceramic jar, with lid, that I made so long ago and try to remember when I made it. Was it after the funeral of my mother? I think so. What was I thinking when I made it? Did I think of my mother, the funeral, the get together afterwards with family and the inherent weirdness that comes from such events?I know for sure that I made this vessel before my grandmother died, and before my oldest sisters boy drowned in the river. I could not attend either of these funerals. The jar however was in my younger sisters house through both of these occasions. Can anon-sentient object continue to absorb the psychic energy that flows daily from the sentient beings around it?I made the jar on a pottery wheel, the process of which creates a round vessel. While it was still wet I took boards and pushed in the sides to make it somewhat square. In creating something do we try to force a thing in to a shape that reflects our need to change our own lives? What emotional pressure did I exert while exerting the physical pressures required to push the inherent roundness of this vessel into a squarer shape? Did I secretly, or perhaps not so secretly, try to gain some control over the life that was going on around me? Is artistic endeavor a way of dealing with what Life has or has not given me? Now, I watch as the vessel I made is lowered into the ground by nephew and niece, my younger sisters children, two young adults having their last physical contact with their sister.A vessel is made to contain things, ashes or memories, secrets that it now takes with it to the grave.