Look Mom, I Can Fly: Notes From the Wide Skies of Grieving My Only Child

How does a mother survive the death of her only child?

When Luna Jaffe's son, Hunter, died suddenly at twenty-two, her world split open. Nothing could prepare her for the tidal wave of grief that followed, nor for the silence it imposed. In the wreckage, she reached for what had always guided her-art, language, ritual. On Hunter's grave, she laid mandalas made of flowers and feathers. In the studio, she painted watercolors steeped in sorrow. In the quiet hours, she wrote letters, poems, and prayers, each one a thread across the abyss.

Look Mom, I Can Fly: Notes from the Wide Skies of Grieving My Only Child gathers these creations into a work that is at once memoir, art book, and love letter. Across more than 300 pages of full-color images, poetry, and prose, Jaffe charts the first year of mourning-where beauty and despair walk hand in hand.

This is not a book of answers or platitudes. It is a book of presence. Jaffe writes with unflinching honesty about the fury, tenderness, disbelief, and longing that shape grief. She also reveals how creativity became her lifeline, offering a way to bear what otherwise felt impossible.

For parents who have lost children, for anyone walking through the wilderness of grief, and for communities searching for ways to companion the bereaved, Look Mom, I Can Fly is both mirror and map. It testifies to love that does not die, to memory that refuses to fade, and to the possibility of beauty even in the ruins.