April 30 - Grief

Jackie left on a cold, dark night
Telling me he'd be home
Sailed the seas for a hundred years
Leaving me all alone
And I've been dead for twenty years
I've been washing the sand
With my ghostly tears
Searching the shores for my Jackie-oh

~ Sinead O'Connor Jackie (link)

One of the favorite high school memories that my wife has shared with me is when she and a friend won tickets to a Sinead O'Connor concert.  (Click that link!!)  Sinead has an unmatched soulful power in her voice and songs, it's a shame that many people reduce her to "that one bald chick".

Jackie is a song about a woman dealing with the grief of losing her husband at sea.  Screaming "you're all wrong!" in denial at the man who brings the news, and never accepting it as reality.  She is haunted to search the shores, ever scanning the horizon in hopes of his return.

I built two balloons trying to capture the grief.  First was the older woman, refusing to call herself a widower, but then I took the lyrics literally and built a ghost version of her younger self.

The rough form of the balloon is based on Shana Brenion's cutie dolls and remains one of my favorite balloon concepts to make women with.

---

Other cutie doll balloon designs:

All Shana