In 2002, my father made a video of my mother on the last day of her life. The footage was erased before I had a chance to watch it, and so it turned into an imagined memory, a deep longing for something I had never seen.

Ten years later, I started working on a short film about this experience. It was difficult. How could I show something that fundamentally cannot be shown? How could I represent footage that doesn’t exist? How would I portray my mother, now that she’s gone? Actors were not an option; that idea was absurd. They would never be able to capture the vision I had in mind. I considered playing my mother — people always said we looked alike. Maybe that way I would get as close as possible. After all, the memory is a part of me.

I kept looking. I watched what remained of the videotape. Footage of empty rooms in our home. Footage that Dad took, the morning after Mom was gone. All that was left were inanimate objects.

Humans create objects to make their lives more efficient. People use these objects, and then they die. And then suddenly these objects begin to carry a meaning that they didn’t have before. They become memorials.