The last of the deoxygenated blood clotting in Mum’s palms / I have a couple more questions about art I need to ask you

This piece is an abstract depiction of livor mortis; I’ve tried to make a very ugly thing beautiful. I watched my Mum die for two and a half years and then all at once, when she swallowed a Voluntary Assisted Dying prescription. It’s quite hard to explain the nauseating anticipation that hung in the air as I prepared the mixture, but it wasn’t entirely terrible. It was practical and beautiful and a very lucky choice to have had. Mum, in her little destroyed body and wounded mind, had still giggled and cracked jokes. The moment that pierced me, though, was rotating her soft, white hand that I’d been holding, to see blotches of dark purple blood vessels pooling in her palm.