This digital collage is about what happened to my dad’s heartbeat when he took his last breath.

I’m showing the sound and light and movement during the multimedia performance in the Showroom gallery.

The image shows a colleague clapping my dad’s heartbeat (on the left) and me talking (on the right).
On either edge are (white on blue) images of the respective soundtracks.In the centre are images of an acorn. representing my dad’s heart. When my dad takes his last breath, the acorn-heart starts to split open*. My tears water it into a fantasy-sprout.

My dad’s heart might have stopped beating. But the acorn – and I – then grow in some totally new ways.

So my dad’s last breath and his last heartbeat lead to germination and ongoing growth.

There truly is a Cycle of Life going on here!

The words of Heartbeat/Last Breath in the Showroom performance are shown here.
Check out the stories from before this  – of how my dad and I talked about his last skiing Black Run (1), and then he did some Deathbed Skiing (2). 
Afterwards, there’s a Cycle of Life image and words (4) from when I washed my dad’s body.

*: The images of the acorn are derived from Neil Bromhall’s great time-lapse video: Acorn to Oak