Naadira and I got to know each other on Instagram after both our husbands died a month apart at the end of 2022. We weren't acquainted before then, but in each other, we felt seen and understood, connected by the death of our husbands, widowhood, and parenting two young bereaved children.The idea for this photo essay first came about when, in March 2024 - more than a year after her husband's death, Naadira said to me online, "...would it be OK if I asked..how you went through Larry's belongings?"

What came to be was, our first time meeting in person, and a series of photos where I bore witness to Naadira's grief as she went through some of Hasyali's belongings that she previously couldn't bear to - his work uniforms and certificates, his prayer mat, and the clothes he wore when he died. Some items, Naadira found, was too hard to put away in storage, so they went back into the wardrobe. In the last image, Naadira pauses before leaving home to look at Hasyali's backpack that has remained hooked on the wall, unpacked from the last time he used it, a daily reminder of and yearning for a life that once was.

The project is layered by my own grief. It is not lost on me that these images were shot on my late husband's camera that I brought to Naadira's home in the backpack he used to use for his photoshoots. "Still here" doesn't refer just to our loved ones' physical belongings; it also alludes to the love and grief, as well as our children's grief, that we continue to carry long after the people we love have gone.

Perhaps Naadira's own words about the images best addresses what "Still Here" is about: "I felt so seen in them...my grief, my love for him, my deep deep yearning for him."