Mother Death

Aldo Buselli came from Peru to New Orleans Louisiana to become an architect. He was already an artist. School was his main focus and his art was "playing" for him.

A young man shrouded in South American Catholicism arrived in that most different of southern US cities where the raised above ground cemeteries are major attractions. These cities of the departed were focal points for a culture.


















Statue of Grief - Metairie Cemetery


I do not know all of Aldo's story. He was a friend of a friend and I think I met him only once very briefly during one of my visits to the city.

Aldo's Catholicism seemed to merge with the spirits of New Orleans and his senior architecture project was a design for a cemetery.

Perhaps he knew before it was known. This was very early in the AIDS epidemic before it had a name. He died not too long after he returned to his home in Peru. By then it had a name.















Pencil drawing
Aldo Buselli




Fifteen years later I was visiting my same friend, now in Orlando. She pulled out a long tall and narrow cardboard box and said please go through this and pick some thing to take. This is Aldo's art work that I have been carting around all these years. It is time for me to let some of it go.

Most of the works contained in the box were rough sketches and drawings. Some of the pieces had a more finished look. The subject matter was diverse. As I went through the large quantity of contents that had been contained in the long narrow box nothing was calling out to me. It was nice but if it didn't speak to me I was not going to be taking it back to Hawaii.

Then she appeared as I turned the pages in the pile of art and I stopped. Pressed into thick heavy paper was a faceless dark feminine figure. The image was textured and the folds of her garments actually existed in the folds and creases of the paper. That pressed image was then colored degrees of black. She appeared again in the pile and then a third time. Three images of this dark figure each slightly different. One was signed and titled by Aldo. This is what I wanted.








Aldo Buselli
'Mother Death'





Mother Death spoke to me of her gentle loving embrace. This dark feminine image said what I felt to be true. Death is not to be feared. I sleep under her watchful gaze, ready at any time and in no hurry. Life may be made just a little bit easier when there is no need to worry about death.

Let the world stop turning
Let the sun stop burning
Let them tell me love's not worth going through
If it all falls apart, I will know deep in my heart
The only dream that mattered had come true
In this life, I was loved by you.
(Listen to Braddah Iz - n dis Life)

It is this Life that matters and what you leave for the living.
Not what may or may not come after.
















Vincent van Gogh - Pieta