This is where the journey begins — and where it was always going to end up. Before the hunt for pictures, before the ferry rides and road trips and strangers’ living rooms, there was a son who had never properly grieved his mother. This chapter is his introduction.
My name is Luke Edward Ollett. I was born to Dick Ollett and Zoë Alexandra Payne.
I was only 18 when Zoë passed away. I was in the middle of defining my own identity, my own self exploration as a man and as a human. I chose to react to her death with stoicism and decided to deal with my own burgeoning life, over remembering hers.
Decades later, I realized that there is so much I wanted to tell her. So much I wish I could share with her. I felt the absoluteness of death was unfair and got in the way of our relationship. I needed to tell her I had lived in multiple countries. I needed a way to share with her that I liked animals, that I learned another language, that I suck at drawing but call myself an artist. I needed to show my love and appreciation for her, something I had never done.
And to make it worse, I often forgot the sound of her voice, the curl of her smile. I struggled to remember when we last touched each other. And I felt like a horrible person for that.
Our relationship felt incomplete and I didn’t know what to do about it.
I wish I hadn’t been a naive teenager who chose not to care more during those last few difficult years of her life. I don’t know what I would have done, or could have done, but when she decided that life wasn’t just hard, but impossible, I wish I would’ve been there for her… with her.
This book is my journey to find my dead mother’s art through the names in this book, the people that knew her more than I ever did. To understand who she was, not only as my mother but as a friend, a lover, a partier, a person.
A frisbee golf course. A total solar eclipse. A mentor going through a divorce. And a drawing of a cactus and an owl that somehow said exactly what needed to be said, at precisely the right moment.
From Jeff’s house in Washington, I headed south via train to Portland to see my friend and mentor, Charlie. He guided me through my highschool years and was a heavy influence in the way I live my life today. He and I have lived parallel lives. I in Chile, he in Turkey. We both found life and love and attempted to bring it back to the United States.
He and I planned to play frisbee golf during a total eclipse, and I wanted to give him a print of the Cactus and Owl in the middle of it. While the sun faded, and the world embraced a weird temporary darkness, he revealed he had recently divorced.
I’d always seen this picture to represent a broken home. I don’t know why I had it in my hand that day, but it seemed fitting to give to Charlie right then.
I was lucky to catch Charlie during a time of his life where he was changing and evolving. During these times, we have the unique opportunity to look back and consider a version of ourselves that once was, and use that to build and look forward towards a version we want… a version we need.
The print shop worker who named the picture. The word he chose changed everything Luke thought he understood about the year before his own birth. This is one of the shortest chapters — and one of the most striking.
I worked with Andrew at the print shop that would scan and print Zoë’s pictures. I would bring one in and he and I would stand and stare in silence. I would ask him what he thought the name of the pictures should be. When I asked him about this one, he looked down expressionless and said, “Abortion.”
The year on the picture is one year before my birth. Later that day after talking with Andrew, I told my dad about what he had said, and my dad revealed to me for the first time about the abortion he and Zoë had in 1982.
The longest chapter, and the most complicated visit. Cheri and Scott. Tequila and snow. Dark confessions and beautiful memories, told without filter by people who had always lived without one.
A few months later, I drove from Eden, Utah to Whitefish, Montana to deliver a print of the Dandelion Wasp to Cheri. Cheri’s dad was a pilot who lived in San Francisco during the ‘70s and ‘80s. The pilots would leave their children with other pilots’ families as a means of relaxation and/or accommodating work travel. Both having pilots for fathers, Cheri and Zoë would enjoy free or very cheap travel and became regular travelling companions and life long friends.
On the way to Whitefish, I stayed in a cabin surrounded by nothing but snow-covered wilderness for a 20-mile radius. I wanted to see how it felt to be that one light when you look down at night from an airplane as you fly over an otherwise black landscape.
It reminded me of a story about Zoë and her friend Lyn, who pulled over on the side of the road to look at a rainbow over a cornfield. With giggles and arms waving, Zoë ran towards the rainbow like a child in a fairytale.
My snowfield was her rainbow.
I didn’t know much about Cheri other than I was to be careful around her. I was told that she was a trigger for Zoë and that Cheri was a loose cannon.
Cheri lived with her husband Scott in a two-story house on a large lot caked in snow.
While Cheri was showing me the digital art she’d been creating on her computer, mostly as a distraction to keep her mind off her recently deceased father, Scott came in to announce that his grandson had been diagnosed with autism. Cheri was too engulfed in her work on the computer to give an appropriate reaction, or any reaction really.
Later, as a thank you for their hospitality, I gave them three large bottles of tequila left over from the party in Eden I came from. I would later find out that her husband Scott had been hospitalized for drinking copious amounts of tequila. I didn’t know what to do. Should I have taken the bottles back? Dumped them out? I ended up leaving them there and hoping it wouldn’t start a problem.
One morning, Scott and I went for a snowy walk around the neighborhood where we found ourselves in a serious heart-to-heart conversation despite only knowing each other for all of three hours. Me confessing my failing marriage, and he about his wife and regrettable decisions in life. Maybe that’s what made it easier – telling your deepest darkest secrets to a complete stranger. It was refreshing.
I asked Cheri about Zoë. She had many beautiful stories of her and Zoë traveling the world together and how close she had been with Zoë’s family. But she also had some very dark stories. She would describe herself walking into Zoë’s art room and seeing Zoë leaning over a bucket, cutting her forearms and letting the blood drip into it. I knew Zoë did this but had never seen it for myself. I’d only seen the aftermath, of white bandaged arms and slanted looks from neighbors.
On a trip to get a new router for Cheri and Scott, Cheri told me that she thought my dad killed my mom. I stared at the routers in front of me with a straight face just like I did when Scott announced his grandson was autistic. I eventually thanked her for her candor. In hindsight, I understand her theories. According to Cheri, Zoë was always worried about some girl named Barbrö, who was Dick’s brother’s ex-wife. Shortly after Zoë passing away, Dick married Barbrö.
I didn’t have the words to describe a lifetime of hardship and sacrifice my dad had dedicated to Zoë, but I knew Cheri’s allegation not to be true.
I found a note at the bottom of Zoë’s jewelry box. In typewriter font, it said:
I love you Zoë I want you to get better
I don’t care how long that takes I will do anything I can to help this happen I will never leave you I will make whatever changes to myself to make all the above happen Never give up but have patience But most important of all, I love you Zoë
(see you soon, Dicki Bird)
When I unfolded the note, a bloodstained razor fell out of it. Until then, everything about my mother and her thoughts seemed intangible and potentially a figment of my imagination. But picking up that razor made it all feel very real. I had visions of my mom digging it into her forearm while she read the note, maybe crying. I had visions of my dad struggling to know what to do, how to help, and this note being just one of the many ways he tried.
Before I left, I showed Scott and Cheri some slides I had scanned from Zoe’s travels to California. The slides showed Scott and Cheri with Zoë during their high school years doing high school things. Despite the psychological intensity of the last few days, these pictures brought a big calm to it all. As they viewed the pictures, I could feel them breathing life back into what was and what still could be.
Although filled with antics, I really enjoyed my time with Cheri and Scott. Their unedited and vigorous approach to life, love, and tragedy… was refreshing, and reminded me of myself.
After two years and fifteen people, Luke returns to the question he started with: who was his mother? This final chapter is not an answer — but it is something better than one.
During the two years it took to find all the pictures in this book, I’ve learned more about Zoë than I’d ever planned. And yet, I yearn to know her more. There are at least a dozen more pictures being cared for by equally amazing and interesting people as those in this book. From painful stories of depression and suicide, to intense battles with alcoholism, to her one-day employment at Disney, to the eagles she painted on the gas tanks of a biker gang. There are a lifetime of stories I want to know more about.
I started this journey feeling the relationship with my mother was incomplete. And it still is. It will always be incomplete, and that’s okay. Every good relationship is an ever growing mountain of shared experiences you have with someone. In life and in death.
The shared experience is a very powerful thing. Unconditional empathy for another about specific things and specific people. When Zoë died, or maybe before, I decided to give up on that shared experience. I didn’t think there was anything more to gain from it.
But through the art in this book, the names in this book, and through me… Zoë continues to share herself and her experience with all of us.
