Nicole's story

The morning after my Nonno died, I arrived at his home to find his life being thrown into an industrial skip. It was too fast; I wasn't ready. Seeing the physical vestiges of his existence treated as debris felt deeply personal. It felt like someone was literally throwing him away. I remember climbing the sides of that skip, desperately retrieving what I could, consumed by a terror that he was being permanently erased and forgotten. 

 

My Nonno's death sent me on a profound journey to make sense of my own grief. I travelled to India, embedding myself in ancient Hindu death and bereavement rituals. Upon my return, driven to understand the stark reality of my physical existence, I spent months observing the industrial spaces of mortality: morgues, embalmers, and cremation houses.

 

Through my camera I documented this entire landscape, culminating in an award-winning photographic exhibition. The exhibition pieces were delicate boxes made of raw wood, embossed red velvet, and ornate gold laser-cut frames, designed to mimic the 1850s memento mori traditions where the dead were honoured and their memory immortalised beautifully. It was my first lesson in alchemy: turning the heavy weight of grief into a sanctuary of peace.

 

Driven to understand the deeper transitions of the human spirit, I travelled to New York City, where I completed studies in Thanatology (the study of death, dying, and grief) and Sound Therapy. I worked bedside visiting dying patients in their homes helping to ease their suffering at the threshold of life and death. Upon returning to Melbourne, I graduated with a Post Graduate Degree in Pastoral Care, and continued this work in local Palliative Care Units, holding steady space for families at the edge of mortality.

 

I realise now that grief is universally unique; no two people experience the death of a loved one in the same way. Some are driven by a desperate urge to purge the pain and rush to empty a life, something which so often leads to permanent regret. Others are driven by the heavy weight of sorrow and hold onto everything until the belongings become unbearable to face. The traces of those we lose require a far more tender sanctuary; a calm, deliberate boundary held not in a flash of intense emotion, but with unhurried care. Long before I had the words for any of this, my Nonna already understood it.

 

Years earlier, each morning, she would light a lumino – an oil candle housed in a glass vessel. She placed this flame tenderly beside photographs of religious icons, and those she had loved and lost. My brother and I would stand beside her in absolute silence. As children, we could not fully articulate the gravitas of her ritual, yet we felt its profound weight entirely. That small light was her way of anchoring the departed, a silent testament that their warmth had never truly left us.

 

From these contrasting moments of devotion, sudden fracture, and deep exploration, Lumino Vestige was born.

 

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